When it's in your hands
by Malluchan
Summary: What if the tallest structure in your country suddenly vanished one day, and what if you were the only one who knew what was happening? What if it had been you? What if you can't save the rest? If your best friend had barely made it out alive, would you ever be the same again? You've read about heroes, but what will you do when it's in your hands?
1. Prologue

There were 5 classes of Onlookers that day.

There were the people in the plane, looking down as the building began to dissolve.

There were the ones around the building, about to go inside, or the ones who had just walked out.

There were the kids in the top-level elementary school right across the street. There was also the group of adventurous teenagers on top of the buildings nearby, taking photographs of themselves touching the sky.

And there were the people inside the building who were lucky enough to get out.

* * *

Tobio raced out of the collapsing building, flicking a horrified glance over his shoulder as his feet hit the pavement hard. He nearly fell when he saw that the building wasn't collapsing.

It was _melting_.

A girl flung herself out of a nearby car and fell into step beside him. Maya. At least she hadn't been inside when it happened.

As his feet hit the edge of the curb of the parking lot, the rest of the building came into view, the doors packed with people trying to get out, and the ones who were being trampled. He'd been lucky to get out when he did.

Maya slowed to a halt at the side-walk at the opposite side of the highway, unable to run any farther. She'd never been one to run very much.

Tobio stopped beside her and turned around. Cars pulled out of the parking lot, only to be blocked by the flood of police cars flowing in. Officials tried their hardest to stop the erratic stream of escapees, but held up their hands in surrender for their own safety. They were too late anyhow.

Was there anything anyone could have done?

The building finally melted into the last of a gigantic crater, reaching hundred of feet deep. Ominous, bubbling grey sludge, like cooled but still melting lava, and the ones who'd been inside when it happened were dragged under forever, never to breath again. Gone.

And as the remains of the building belched one last time, sending a shower of its contents a few feet out towards the parking lot, the edges of it began to crust over. Within seconds it was hardened into one deep cesspool of hardened rock, and the victims of the sight would be scarred for life at the horror of seeing their companions dragged into the bowels of the earth.

* * *

Ryuga looked up from the book he was reading as a small child tripped over his feet. He rolled his eyes skyward, wishing this day would end.

Of course, the one day he thought he'd have some time off, he was dragged to Gingka's crazy house and expected to have a good time.

As Kevin picked himself up again and began to traverse the rest of the living room, a sudden hush fell over the inhabitants of the crowded apartment. Ryuga craned his neck over Kevin's blond head, then stood up, so he could see the television.

All the eyes in the house were turned towards it in horrified silence, some mouths open, a drink dropped on the carpet in disbelief, but nobody was thinking about carpet hygiene right now. Something was happening in Tokyo. And it wasn't good.

The room seemed to go numb. Not a soul moved. The top of the Tokyo Tower was...gone, it was just completely gone. And it wasn't stopping there. The building was melting, melting like a lit candle at high speed. At the edge of the screen you could just catch Tobio's blond head as he pulled Maya out of her car and across the street, and then the building completely vanished, in its wake a sea of melted metal and concrete and asphalt, and not a single survivor, except for those who were out when it happened.

And in all the commotion, nobody noticed that Kyouya was having a headache in the bathroom or that Kevin was torturing the dog. Everybody was just standing there and thinking how it could've been them.


	2. All the world remembers

Note: I know this is a sci-fi/horror, but these first few chapters are about mourning. We get to the up-at-night action soon enough, don't worry.

* * *

Masamune knelt at the edge of what had once been a building, feeling a little silly.

CAT trucks had been coming through all day, piling fresh earth into the crater. It took tons and tons of it to fill the entire thing. A nicely-shaped mound now rested on the top, cold and lifeless, out of place against the buzz of the city.

All around him, people knelt. Mothers and grandparents, sons and daughters, uncles and friends and cousins and nephews. Husbands tried to comfort wives as their own tears fell, brothers handed their sisters flowers. People left by themselves, standing alone at the edge of the hill of earth.

All around the country, hospitals had rearranged themselves, foster homes had opened up, and blood banks had filled. But their were no survivors to hospitalize, none badly hurt so as to need blood. All of is was gone, just gone in the span of a few minutes, the relationships and first impressions and soul felt structures built over years, crushed. Or melted.

Young couples left single. Mothers childless and children parent-less, Best Friends Forever wiped away in the blink of an eye.

Every kind of person gathered around the parking lot now, bundles of flowers and little statues in their hands, wiping their eyes to no avail. Men in suits and little girl in dresses stood together at the top of the hill, gently sticking flowers in the earth and clustering memorial statues around the edges. Masamune tugged the necklace from around his neck and left it at the very peak, the tiny wooden horse resting upright at an angle in the earth, a tribute to the ones resting beneath it. He had worn it for as long as he could remember, but it felt like it belonged here more than anywhere else.

* * *

As another flight from Egypt came in that afternoon, a small brown face pressed itself to the window. Smudging his nose against the glass, if he looked really hard, DeMorae could just see Masamune's lethalized head bobbing through the melancholy crowd, making his way to the edge of the parking lot. DeMorae wondered if he'd been paying his respects to the dead.

Then he felt a tap on his shoulder. "DeMorae, get your face off the window. You're going to get it dirty."

Reluctantly he turned away. Nile stared ahead, emotionless. He'd been like this the entire trip, even when the news of the collapse had come over the radio in the plane. Not a tear did he shed, nor show that he had any care whatsoever for those affected by the alleged melting. DeMorae knew he should be worried about Nile. Yet he felt somewhere that there was a reason for his unresponsiveness. And so he let it be.

* * *

6 months later

* * *

The snow had finally melted off in the city, its grey remains running into the gutters as the first flowers appeared in the gardens of the walkways.

All around the country, all around the world in fact, people were acknowledging the 6-month anniversary of the Tokyo Meltdown.

Gingka, Madoka, Yu, Kenta, Kyouya, Hikaru, Masamune, Nile, Ryutaro, Tobio, Maya, and countless others stood in a ring around the temple of earth, hands linked with the one next to them, and eyes shut before the tower of pink buds. Many had come and gone this early morning. Many had left pieces of themselves behind in the just-thawed earth. Thousands had lost their lives, but they had never forgotten.

_And the 12th day showed that the sun still rose  
As we tried to find our way  
Through the steel and smoke, though it smouldered  
We were cold and blanketed by grey...  
_

None saw the news reporter across the street. Nobody was there so they could get on the news.

At the top of the hill sat a small statue that the people of Tokyo had donated money for, anchored in the ground solidly. Around its neck hung a small wooden horse.

_And our scars have made us stronger turning strangers into brothers_  
_We remember, we recover as we hold on to each other_  
_And our scars have made us stronger turning strangers into brothers_  
_As we hold on to each other in a silent moment we think of you now_

Every day for months, the parking lot had been full. From the early dawn-tainted sky to the quiet hush of the witching hour, somebody was remembering.

_These empty spaces, across a bruised skyline_  
_The names and faces, I can't erase them from my mind_  
_These empty spaces, across a bruised skyline_  
_The names and faces, I can't erase them from my mind_

Madoka opened her eyes as the last line of the lonely song beat out into the morning sky, and let go of the others' hands around her.


	3. Looking Back

The song from the last chapter, The 12th Day, is accredited to Autopilot Off. The story idea is thanks to SabrinaNotscha.

* * *

You could still see the cars.

Even in the long months of winter, they'd lain there, buried underneath heaps of snow like gargantuan beetles hibernating below the surface of the earth. With nobody to claim them and the keys buried hundreds of feet deep, they stayed on like tombstones of the dead beneath them.

The government hadn't bothered to remove them. In fact, it would've caused quite an uproar if they had; they were lost pieces of the people from inside the building, who had slept in them, ate breakfast in them, drove their kids to school in them.

Tsubasa wove in and out between the Chevies and the Hondas and the Cadillacs as half-open buds and lost petals floated from the sky around him, thrown down by the bucket load from helicopters imprinted against the bright blue. It seemed cruel that this day should be so pretty.

He stopped for a moment, glancing back at the statue atop the hill as the others left the parking lot. That necklace seemed so familiar, like somebody he knew wore one just like it. But he couldn't place whom.

* * *

Kyouya stared across the street vacantly at the happy, living building standing firm on its foundation. The whole gang had walked down a few blocks to a coffee shop, for the spring air still held the chill breath of winter in its breeze.

How had this happened?

The fact was, he'd known it would happen. It was only the night before that he'd felt something tug at his mind as he fell asleep, then only a few moments later, in a dream, it had come to him. A tall building, hauntingly familiar, against a sky half-blackened with city smog. Melting like the death of a candle on the desk of a writer.

And then the next day, seeing it on the television, just as it had been in his dream...it had all come out to too much. He'd run back to the bathroom before the dream could end with Tobio being crushed beneath the melting doorway, huddled on top of the toilet seat and wishing for it to be over.

But Tobio hadn't died, in the end. He'd gotten out. And he'd been there at the Meltdown Memorial, just a second ago.

"You gonna drink that?"

Absent-mindedly, he surrendered his coffee to Masamune (who really didn't need it) and decided to forget the whole thing. It was a glitch. A coincidence. He'd dreamed the whole thing.

Really, he had dreamed the entire thing. He'd been asleep.

* * *

"Do you notice that Kyouya's acting weird lately?"

"Aside from the fact that he's a totally psychotic blader bent on destroying Gingka?"

Madoka glared and put her hands on her hips. "You know what I meant."

Tsubasa chuckled. "Yes, I know." Then his face grew serious. "But I've noticed it too."

"He got that headache in the bathroom a few months ago, just when they started showing the Tokyo Meltdown on TV."

"Yes, and he ran into the middle of the apartment building screaming 'The building's melting'."

"I have no idea what's wrong with him..."


	4. The beginnings of destruction

And...one more little thing I forgot to mention. This is based off the film "Final Destination", which I've never seen. But Wikipedia is epic for stuff like that.

* * *

_I know this place, I've seen it before._

_It's quiet here. Like a graveyard. Not the good kind of quiet. _

_It looks like an office._

_All of a sudden, I can see flames licking the inside of the walls - no fuel, no beginning. They were just there._

_I run outside, there's nobody else out here. Nobody notices. They're all in their cars leaving, or across the street at the coffee shop. None of the others can see me calling out. Someone's still in there._

_But no-one sees the flames. Somebody's still inside, that's all I can think._

_I told him not to go. I told him to stay home today. I knew this would happen. But he didn't listen. What has he done?_

_The flames reached the top of the roof now, and the room is starting to fall down. It's a corner office. _

_The flames have stopped spreading. They're not going anywhere else in the building, eating up only the room that he's in - I tried to save him - _

_Kenta's crying now, I can hear him. He's got his head buried in Ryuga's coat so he doesn't have to see._

_And the roof is falling down - _

* * *

Kyouya woke up screaming. Again.

Cold sweat ran down his sides, onto his palms, off of his scalp. A dream. It was only a dream.

He'd dreamt and re-dreamt the Tokyo Meltdown at least one night a week wince it happened. But now, he'd dreamt something different.

Where had he seen that room before? He was sure it was familiar.

Benkei stuck his head into the room, wielding a torch. Kyouya instantly shielded his eyes from the unaccustomed light. "Hey, Kyouya-buddy, are you okay in here?"

"Yes, I'm fine", Kyouya snapped irritably. "Go away."

"But I heard - "

"It was the cat, okay!?"

"Man, the cat's been screaming a lot lately." Benkei, looking perplexed, left the room.

Kyouya put his head in his hands. He needed to see a psychologist or something.

* * *

"Is this...fish, Benkei?" Gingka sniffed at the plate in front of him suspiciously.

"Yeah. It's fish. GRILLED fish", Benkei answered, looking proud of himself.

"But it's breakfast time, Benkei", Madoka laughed.

"I know, but hey! Gotta finish those leftovers sometime."

"I don't like fish", Kyouya muttered, pushing the plate away. "Is there any cereal?"

"I don't know, Kyouya-buddy. I have to go now."

"Where are you going?" Gingka said curiously.

"Oh, I've got like, a job interview or somethin'...over at the Mercury building."

"Oh. Okay, good luck, Benkei."

"Yeah. Oh, and, watch out for Riley. He's been screaming at night." Riley was the cat.

"Okay."

After Benkei left, Riley leapt up on the counter near Kyouya, who was searching the cabinets for cereal.

"Hi, Riley. Go away."

"Meow."

"Stop that."

Riley meowed again and flicked his tail, sending a sheaf of papers fluttering to the floor on the other side of the counter, where Madoka, Gingka, and Masamune were sitting.

"Oh, you crazy cat. Screaming at night and knocking stuff off counters..." Masamune bent to pick up the papers, shuffling through electric bills and post-its with phone numbers on them, a printout from some website about the government, and a shiny laminated flier.

"Now hiring, Mercury Enterprises! Strong, well-muscled person needed to help our loading team..."

"Hey!" exclaimed Masamune. "This must be where Benkei's applying." He flipped through the flier, then tossed it over onto the counter by Kyouya where it had been before. It lay still half-open, showing a peek at its rich colours and promising print. As Kyouya leaned over it to open another cabinet, a photograph inside caught his eye.

It was the room from his dream. The quiet office where the fire started.

_The roof is falling. Benkei's underneath. He can't get out - I can't see him anymore..._

Kyouya frantically sifted through the memories of his dream from last night. There had been no windows in the room, but when he'd run out, it had been near evening. So the fire wouldn't start until later, about 6 or so.

Could it really be possible? Could the corner office fall under an unprompted flame? He'd dreamt about the Tokyo Meltdown hours before it was due to happen. Tobio had even been there, just like in the dream.

Something nagged at the corner of his mind and he knew. Benkei must not go to that office today.


	5. The only thing left of him now

Kyouya's feet pounded hard on the side-walk as he raced down the street, the Mercury Enterprises flier tucked beneath his arm, showing a map of the city and the location of the building.

After a few minutes, he caught sight of Benkei walking around a corner. He raced through a crowd of people and stopped right on the corner beside his friend, who was waiting for the light to turn green so he could cross. Benkei turned to him in surprise as he doubled over, attempting to catch his breath.

"Ky-Kyouya-pal? What are you doing here? I thought you were eating breakfast..."

"I..." Kyouya straightened. "You can't go today."

"What? I don't know what you're talking about, buddy."

"You have to stay home. That building's gonna catch fire this evening, and you won't get out alive."

"How do you know that? That's crazy. Are you okay, Kyouya-pal?"

"Because..." Kyouya faltered for an explanation. If he told Benkei about his dream, Benkei would know he had lied. And he might not believe him. "Because I know it. You have to stay here."

The light turned green.

"Sorry, buddy. I have to go. It was scheduled and I can't miss it." He began to traverse the street absentmindedly. Kyouya jumped to his feet and hurried after him.

"But can't you reschedule it for another day?"

"This is the only day available, sorry...if I don't go today...it's the last chance to get the job. And I really, really need the job. Besides, how do you know the building's gonna catch fire? That's just crazy-talk."

Kyouya looked away, mumbling, "Yeah, I should see a doctor or something..."

"NO, that's not what I meant, people just don't...know stuff like that. You'll see and it'll be just fine. You can come with me, if you feel better about it", Benkei offered.

Kyouya hesitated. Should he go? If he did, he would have the chance to save Benkei. But what would he do all day until evening rolled around?

"I'll come back around 4 or 5. I have stuff to do today."

"Okay, don't worry about me." As Benkei walked away, Kyouya heard him mutter, "Burning building, that's crazy."

Kyouya walked back down the street to the apartment. Madoka, Gingka, and Masamune had left already. He picked up Riley, who meowed insistently for attention, and fell onto the couch. He was glad to have the cat to cover his case.

Maybe he should schedule that psychologist meeting, just in case.

* * *

Kyouya groaned an opened his eyes to find Riley staring at him intently.

"Meow."

"ARGH! RILEY! DON'T DO THAT!"

He sat up, rubbing his face tiredly. The clock on the wall said...

4: 30!?

He'd slept late! If he didn't get back to Mercury soon, the corner office would be on fire and Benkei would be trapped inside. He raced out the door, forgetting to lock it. Riley had followed him into the hallway. He left him there.

Kyouya raced down the side-walks, crossing streets erratically and dodging women with baby carriages and kids on skateboards. He wished ha had a skateboard.

As he ran, he whipped out his phone. 4:45. He ducked into the Mercury Building, heading for the right front corner.

As he walked in, slowing his footsteps down, he saw that it was the very same room he'd been in before. It was 4:57 now.

A brown desk sat on the far side of the room, a counter wove around two of the walls, and a coffee pot and mini-fridge adorned the counter. It looked like a normal office.

A normal, windowless office.

Kyouya leaned against the wall to wait.

An hour passed. Hour and a half. And then, as the clock reached an hour and three quarters, the door opened and Benkei walked in.

"Oh, Kyouya-pal! You're here already. I just came to pick up my bags."

Kyouya leapt up. "Good. We need to leave. NOW."

Benkei shook his head. "Kyouya, will you just relax!? There's nothing wrong."

He walked over to the corner and grabbed a bag, taking his time all the way.

And just when Kyouya thought they would make it home free, flames flew up the drywalls, engulfing them almost immediately.

Kyouya grabbed Benkei's arm. "I told you so! Now, HURRY UP!"

Benkei, looking astounded, didn't budge.

"BENKEI! COME ON!"

Benkei moved an inch. "Okay", he gasped. "I'm right behind you."

Kyouya raced out the doorway, hearing Benkei's footsteps behind him as he ran. Bursting into the open, he turned and found that Benkei was nowhere in sight.

"Benkei! BENKEI!"

Nobody answered him as the flames stopped at the roof of the office, not going up any farther, not leaving even so much as dark marks past the border of the office room.

Benkei's face appeared in a window as Ryuga, Madoka, Kenta, and Gingka raced up from the coffee shop across the street. Kyouya cried Benkei's name again, but it was too late.

The roof collapsed. Kenta screamed. Ryuga grabbed him and turned him away from the flames, and Madoka covered her face.

Kyouya just watched. No words. No tears. Unsure he would ever move again.

As quickly as the flames had come, they were gone.

Underneath the overhang of the second story of the building, mangled steel and burnt drywall lay in a pile, the only remnants of what had once been there. From beneath a beam, a piece of red fabric lay. A jacket. That was the only thing left.


	6. In your memory

Madoka, Gingka, Masamune, Ryuga, Kenta, and Kyouya sat huddled in the living room. All of them were stunned into silence. Not a tear had been shed as of yet; it was too unbelievable to cry over.

Kenta stared up at the ceiling dazedly. There was no way that Benkei was just...gone like that. He had been here this morning, so happy and jolly, feeding them fish for breakfast...and at lunch, he had met them all at the deli, joking about ham and telling them about his day. And now he was just...non-existent. Nothing remained.

After they had left the scene of the fire, somebody had stopped Kyouya and handed him the red jacket they'd gotten from beneath the beams; since he was Benkei's closest friend, it seemed fitting that he should have it.

He was wrapped in it now, on the couch with his eyes closed. Riley was pawing at his leg, wanting attention, but Kyouya didn't seem to notice.

* * *

It didn't smell like smoke.

The jacket.

It smelled like light sweat, and dust. It smelled like hard work and fish and laundry detergent, and it smelled like summer and grass and the cat. But not a trace of smoke clung to that jacket.

And nothing else was left. Not the hat, not his shoes. Not a strand of his hair or even his beyblade. They hadn't searched the fire site completely yet. But Kyouya knew they wouldn't find any of it.

The desk still stood, charred and with one leg missing. All the papers were intact. You couldn't even tell that the coffee pot had been in the midst of the fire. Benkei was the only thing missing now.

That jacket...

Not even a single particle of ash marred its red bulk or tarnished its frayed sleeves. It was clean.

* * *

When they got to the vacant space where the corner office had once been, they found it cleared of rubble and building remnants. Nothing remained of the disaster from the day before.

Nothing except for grass...

Grass. Yes, grass, growing right on the ground where the fire had been. Nobody had planted it there, and it certainly couldn't have grown there overnight. But how could it have grown beneath the foundation of the corner office?

Kyouya just sighed. He was too far gone to be surprised by anything anymore.

Maya stepped tentatively under the overhang and looked around at the grass, and the smoke-patterned ceiling. The flames hadn't even affected the walls of the office connected to the building, only those ones facing towards the outside. The door to the office now led to the little space of grass outside. Mercury had no intentions of rebuilding the office, and said that it was only proper to put some sort of memorial there.

"We should plant a tree here", Maya said softly. "An oak tree. Because he was so strong."

It seemed like the right thing to do.

So they spent the rest of the day shopping for a large oak tree, sufficient to erect in memory of their dear friend. One with the prettiest of leaves and the strongest of trunks, who would hold strong for generations to come, so that Benkei might never be forgotten.

And as the evening drew to a close and the city's own stars began to shine over the horizon, Kyouya and Gingka stood back, dusting their hands off, surveying the oak tree. Its top boughs brushed the ceiling of the overhang, and its roots were now planted firmly in the earth. They'd found it buried in the back of an old dusty nursery, the perfect thing with which to fill the empty space of the building.

Maya looked up with shining eyes and rested a small stone statue on the lowest branch, a little bull carved from grey rock.

And as the last light of the daytime faded behind the soft contours of the ocean beyond, the small group of friends parted ways.

Only Kyouya stayed on.

He sat down and leaned back against the trunk of the tree, staring up at the smoke marks on the drywall above him. They formed the shape of a star, a 7-pointed one. Strangely shaped and hauntingly familiar.

Then his eyes closed, and he fell asleep.


	7. Learning to live again

The days passed slowly.

Kyouya moved in with Gingka and his dad, unable to make enough money to keep the old apartment. The slanted ceiling of the attic room was stuffed with photographs and postcards from a million places now, once stacked in cluttered desk drawers where he used to live, stuck to the rough wooden beams with blu-tac and bits of tape.

Milk crates lined the edges of the walls, filled with messily folded clothes, some stacked vertically and filled with old notebooks and odds and ends, bits and pieces of long ago. The bed sat in the centre of the wall at the back, unmade and covered with spare guest sheets. Even in its cluttered and homey state, the room seemed only temporary, like any moment now Benkei would walk through the door, demanding his jacket back, with his car waiting on the curb outside to take him home. But despite all this he knew it would never happen.

Hikaru walked carefully through the attic door, wary of potentially sharp objects lurking beneath the scattered pillows and assorted clothing articles, stepping only on those patches of exposed floor - few and far between.

"Hey, are you ok?" Ryo often asked her to check on Kyouya, just in case he'd decided to blast holes through the wall or something.

"Yes. For the last time, I AM FINE."

"All right, you want some water?" Hikaru brandished the glass in her hand as Gingka stuck his head around the doorway, curious to see what Kyouya had on the floor this time.

"Benkei used to drink water", Kyouya wailed, and fell off the bed on purpose.

"We need to get him to a doctor or something", murmured Gingka.

* * *

So Kyouya was hustled down the street to grief therapy the following Friday. Tsubasa practically had to drag him there, ripping up a stop sign along the way.

Kyouya slid into one of the rock-hard folding chairs in the middle of the overcooled room. It was freezing in here. He was at the very back, right underneath one of the vents.

A man came into the room.

"Hello, people, greetings to you. I am your grief counsellor." He didn't look much like a grief counsellor. He sported a comb-over, huge glasses, a suit jacket, and sweatpants. He was short and stocky and looked like the victim of anger management classes.

"First introduce yourselves to the rest of the class, you'll be together the rest of the semester."

Semester. Class. 'INTRODUCE YOURSELVES'. Sounded like he'd gotten lost on the way to the junior high.

One by one, the class said their names.

"Now, you need to find a way to express your grief...telling somebody about it really is the answer, you know..."

Kyouya rolled his eyes. It was going to be a long couple of hours.

Over the course of the next few weeks, he went back and forth from the house to grief therapy to the oak tree memorial, floating back and forth between versions of reality.

Nothing was getting better. Things seemed to be going downhill as his friends tried to push him in the other direction. But Kyouya had never been helped along by human company so much as battle; however, nobody would battle him. He was in "No condition to beyblade", according to Mr. Sweats-and-suede.

Kyouya's point would only be proven further.

One day he walked into grief therapy ready to drop, from the monotony of his life. He'd forgotten to bring a jacket to grief therapy again. Half the summer was gone. Somebody had stolen the little bull from the limb of the oak tree, and Maya was paying good money to replace it.

But this morning, a ray shone through it all.

Instead of their regular grief counsellor, somebody else walked into the room. Somebody with reddish hair and a blue jacket emblazoned with gold, a calm personality and a beyblade clipped to his belt.

Zhou Xing had come to grief therapy. But not as a fellow mourner but as a counsellor.

The first thing he did was turn down the air conditioner, and then he moved all the folding chairs to the edges of the room, leaving a wide space in the centre of the small place. And as Kyouya and the other students watched, he set up foam padded mats across the width of the room, and stood, dusting off his hands.

"There we go. Much better."

"YOU'RE our grief counsellor?"

The first one to speak was a younger girl, one her parents had sent after the death of her little sister.

Zhou Xing flashed that smile over at her. "Yeah, we got rid of the other guy. If any of you were happy before then, he made y'all grieve, am I right or am I right?"

There was collective nodding from the room.

"Okay. We're gonna kick it up a notch, get me? You're all suffering from having lost a loved one, or not being able to let go of them when they broke up with you. ONe of the best ways to cure that is to get moving. SO...get moving!"

Zhou Xing really pushed them for the next few weeks. Every morning the group of 26 met in the room with the air turned down sufficiently, rainbow-coloured exercise mats slapped on the floor, and music playing over the radio. One day he led them on a run through the streets of Metal City, right past the oak tree where the new stone bull was now bolted. Kyouya didn't even shed a tear.

Maybe Zhou Xing really did know what he was talking about. Maybe things could get better after all. People died every day; you couldn't save lives, only prolong them. For the first time since the Meltdown, Kyouya felt peace.


	8. Relapse

Madoka slid into the chair opposite from Gingka. Around them, Hikaru, Tsubasa, and Ryo sat.

The conference room smelled of lemon furniture polish and was dominated by a large oval-shaped table, which covered most of the room, barely leaving enough space for the too-small chairs.

Briefly Madoka wondered if Ryo had gotten the chairs from a kindergarten surplus. But then she turned her mind to other things. The purpose of their being here today was to talk about Kyouya's...condition.

"I think he's getting over it", Hikaru stated almost immediately.

Gingka glared at her. "Really, Hikaru. How many of us even in this ROOM have REALLY gotten over it? How many of you do NOT cry at night!?"

Hikaru lowered her head. Gingka was actually speaking the truth.

"We lost a friend that day", Ryo said softly. "That can't be just...'gotten over'. But what we need to talk about today is whether or not he really needs to continue with this...speech therapy - "

"Grief therapy."

"Yes. Grief therapy."

"I think he's getting BETTER", Hikaru said carefully.

"Much better, Hikaru. Yes. I think so. Do you think he can quit now, Tsubasa?"

"Uh. Sure."

"Gingka?"

"Yes."

"Madoka?"

"Well...really, I think this is up to Kyouya. I have work to do. See you guys later."

Madoka hopped up from her chair and left.

"O...kay. We'll leave it up to Kyouya, then."

* * *

The little group of room 513 stood on the rainbow coloured mats with dance music playing, letting their feet fly wild and their minds be free.

The grief counselling group agreed with Zhou Xing that they'd never seen a class come so far so quickly before.

Zhou Xing wound his way through the little crowd, handing out sweat towels and bottles of water. "Good job. Good. Great."

As he pressed the off button on the radio, a few of the younger people fell down dramatically onto the mats in a signal of defeat, Kyouya among them. The only difference was that Kyouya was out cold.

Zhou Xing raced over to him and instructed Charlie Hallman to call emergency services right away.

* * *

_I can see...lights. And children. Lots of little tiny kids running around._

_This looks like a birthday party, maybe Kevin's. I know he's turning 6 soon._

_There's a little inflatable swimming pool in the back, maybe half a foot deep. I can see Yu walking over there. I think he dropped something._

_Suddenly I can see a tentacle. Maybe it wasn't that shallow after all._

_He's going under - somebody needs to help him! I need to help him, but I can't - move - _

* * *

"It's okay, buddy. Calm down. You just passed out for a sec there is all, ok? Just...stay put. Stay still. KYOUYA, quit moving around so much! Relax, everybody, I took First Responder training...Kyouya, _calm down..._somebody get me a water bottle."

Zhou Xing watched as Kyouya sagged back against the mat. It was like he'd had a seizure or something.

When Ryo came to pick him up, Zhou Xing said Kyouya should take a couple days off and maybe get a checkup, just in case. Really it had looked like Kyouya was having some kind of foresight or something.


	9. It's too late now

Kyouya was not sent back to grief therapy again.

One day he stood in Tsubasa's house opening his mail for him. One of the things Kyouya loved to do was read other people's mail in order to intrude on their personal lives.

He found a weirdly shaped envelope, which looked like it'd been crumpled, licked, and rolled in dirt. The stamp was upside down and the flap was held together with tape. It appeared to be from Ryuga's nephew, Kevin.

On the inside there was a piece of pink construction paper scribbled with green crayon. The messy letters read,

"Deer You.,

I wnated to invit you to my birthday party it is on saterday at 3. and at my house with my mom please get your fraind to pring you to the parrty we ill have cak. And also a pool you dont have to bring a gift

PS the letter got run over by ryuga truck becase he dropped it on the drivway when we wer going to bring it too you

From KEVIN"

Kyouya paled noticeably. A pool? Hadn't he dreamed about a pool, or had some kind of a nightmare about one? And an octopus? He couldn't quite remember.

He only knew that if Yu went to that party it would spell certain doom to him. He threw the ruined envelope into Tsubasa's trash can, glad that he found the letter when he did.

He should've burned it.

Yu had a habit of rummaging through the trash for the old mail Tsubasa didn't want him to read, also bent on destroying people's personal lives. Upon finding the note from Kevin, he ran to Tsubasa with it, begging if he could go.

Tsubasa was a bit miffed that Yu should be going through his garbage can. But he also decided that Yu could attend the birthday party regardless. Otherwise he'd hear no end of it from Kevin and Yu.

Saturday found Tsubasa and Yu climbing into Tsubasa's car, unbeknownst to Kyouya, who thought that the birthday invitation lay crumpled still in the bottom of the garbage bin.

Yu ran around happily with Kevin and the other kids while Tsubasa talked with the older people with sufficient maturity to converse with; actually he did less talking and more listening. And cake-eating.

The hours passed, and the sun started to go down; amazing how much fun grown-up people could have at a little kids' party.

When it was time to leave, Yu didn't want to go.

So Kevin's mum said he could sleep over that night, and Tsubasa would come by to pick him up in the morning. Tsubasa drove home, ready to fall into bed and let cake-filled sleep drift over him.

Back at Kevin's house, the adults walked around wearily, wondering how on earth they would get the children to settle down, and picking up tissue paper and discarded paper plates left on the floor by the children.

Ryuga was already asleep on the couch, and Yu and Kevin were in their pyjamas, bored to no end. Yu had an idea.

"Hey Kevin, let's battle!" And so Kevin pulled out the beyblade that he'd gotten for his birthday, and Gingka was called upon to be the referee.

"3...2...1...LET IT RIP!" Of course Kevin, having just turned 6, and having gotten that beyblade only that day, was disgraced with a stadium out on impact.

Gingka, Yu, and Kevin watched as the beyblade flipped end-over-end and fell into the small kiddy pool at the other end of the yard.

"I'll get it", Yu offered heartily, and ran towards the kiddy pool...

Splashing in his bare feet, he waded towards the centre where the Sunrise Gasher had fallen in.

All of a sudden, Gingka heard a scream from the other end of the yard. Whipping around with his launcher in his hands, he found that Yu seemed to be...wrapped in tentacles...

With another scream, cut off by a gurgle at the end, he was dragged under. Gingka raced to the side of the pool. How could it possibly be large enough for an octopus to house in? Why would an octopus be there anyway?

Beneath the shimmering crystal surface, he could clearly see the octopus, definitely too immense to ever fit into that tiny pool. And yet there it was, deep beneath the water. The Sunrise Gasher bey still floated on the top.

Ryuga raced out, having heard all the yelling, and stood beside Gingka at the edge of the pool. Gingka was leaning over the water, bending down the sides of the pool, his arms and head stuck inside, trying to reach the little boy. Gasping, he came up for air, started stripping off his jacket. "Hold this."

And just as he was about to dive, Yu floated to the surface of the water.

Gingka and Ryuga stood frozen at the side of the pool. Yu lay lifeless on the top, unbreathing and somehow dry except for water on the bottom of his short cuffs. The only thing to indicate that he had been killed by an octopus was the single tentacle mark on the side of his wrist.

Far below them, Libra floated down, down into darkness, unreachable and never to be seen again.


	10. A tree will grow

Gingka gasped and scooped Yu up out of the pool, laying him on the grass and pressing his fingertips to the boy's wrist and neck. No pulse beat beneath his pale white skin, no heartbeat or breath thundered beneath his jacket. "Oh no...ooooh no..."

"Kevin, get me my phone." Kevin already had it in his hand. Ryuga grabbed it and punched in the Emergency Service number.

Tsubasa burst through the door a few minutes later. Once Ryuga had called him he'd gotten in the car, not bothering to put on shoes or a jacket.

The city's humming buzz was broken by the sirens of the ambulance as it rages along the streets of Kevin's neighbourhood. Gingka led Kevin inside as Tsubasa collapsed on the grass beside Yu, brokenhearted.

* * *

Brrrrring...brrrrrrrrrrrrring...

Kyouya realised just how annoying his ringtone was and picked up the phone.

"Yes?"

"Kyouya, you need to come pick up Tsubasa. There's been an accident...I don't think he can drive himself home."

"An...an accident? Is he ok?"

"It's not him. It's Yu."

Kyouya staggered, suddenly feeling faint.

"You know what, now I can't drive either. Let me call Zhou Xing."

Zhou Xing drove Tsubasa home, wondering what was up with all these crazy Japanese people. Fainting and dying all over the place.

* * *

Maya stood back, brushing the earth from her hands.

A little evergreen tree stood now beside the oak, small but significant. It showed spirit in that it would never go brown, youth in its small stature, and heart in its fervour to grow stronger. Someday it might even tower above Benkei's oak.

Around the top of it, she hung a small wooden bat, inlaid with ruby. A flaming fire in the night.

_Once the world's future_

_Now you're just the past_

_You came around through heartache_

_now you're laid to rest at last_

You couldn't save lives. Only lengthen them.

Tsubasa didn't come to the funeral. He didn't come to the little tree. He didn't come much of anywhere anymore. Just another forever-scarred friend that Maya knew she might eventually have to look after.

_You were so young_

_You should have lived to see many other days_

_But perhaps it's for the better,_

_the world works in its own ways_

Maya rested back on her heels in the warm earth and looked up at the sun. As far as she knew, Tsubasa hadn't even touched any of Yu's things yet. Just erased him from his life without moving on.

_You'll never be forgotten_

_though time may leave you behind_

_You're always in our hearts_

_And you're always on our minds_

But this tree would always stand to show that Yu had been here, that he had left his mark on the world. Somebody would come along and see it one day, and they'd know.

_Your mark of love and hearty smile_

_imprinted on time forevermore_

_It's hard to believe that you won't just_

_come walking back through that door_

He'd left like a sunbeam on a rainy day, but the sun always comes back. Even in the night you can see its reflection in the moon.

_You made an impression on our lives_

_with heart and soul and more_

_you always knew how to laugh and smile_

_and for that_

_we miss you more_

Maya stood and stretched her feet out, walking back home as the sun set over Metal City. How many more deaths would she have to see before she even turned 16?


	11. Natasha Hadinglass

Okay. Okay. I'm sorry.

I know I'm a bad person. I know I killed Yu. I hate myself.

Not really.

Because he's not really dead.

I WASN'T SUPPOSED TO TELL YOU THAT BUT I DON'T WANT YOU TO CRY...

I WANT YOU TO KEEP READING...

It will get better. Promise. But right now bear with me through the horror and heartache. It'll be ok.

* * *

As days passed, Kyouya felt like he was sinking into the background.

Kenta, Kevin, and Ryuga were trying to cope with losing Yu. Ryo and Hikaru were struggling to keep the WBBA office running without Tsubasa. Gingka was sinking into despair after not being able to save the little boy. And Zhou Xing's grief therapy class was growing by the day. Kyouya had dropped out to leave room for Kevin's family; he saw Ryuga and Gingka running past his window every morning, with Kenta and Kevin struggling to keep up, pushed on by Zhou Xing. Tsubasa always refused to join them, refused to even peep out his bedroom door.

He waved to them out his bedroom window and cheered them on in his mind. He visited the memorial often and talked a lot, both to the oak tree and the evergreen. That kid might've been annoying but he sure would miss him.

There was one more thing nagging at his mind, though.

It was the dreams. The dream about Tokyo and then the dream about the fire, and the dream about the swimming pool. Some psychological disorder? It was unlikely; visions that actually came true couldn't be the product of psychological disorders, but it was all he could come up with. Either that or he was crazy. Because there was no such thing as ESP.

And so he arranged to see a psychologist the following Thursday. If she couldn't diagnose him, at least maybe she could help him figure himself out. Like yoga for your brain.

* * *

It was cold in the waiting room; the chair covers might've been burgundy once, but were now faded to an ugly watered-down maroon. The wood of the armrests was scratched and tarnished, engraved with "Miley was here", and "Tyler stinks". It all sort of figured in because this particular psychologist counselled troubled high school students a lot.

Kyouya ran his left hand over the roughly scratched hearts and gang symbols, etched in ballpoint pen for all the world to see, a erratic and failing gesture of rebellion. With the other hand he fingered the leaf in the right pocket of Benkei's jacket, which he never took off. The leaf from the oak tree in the burnt lot. It had just fallen into his hair one day and stuck there, unnoticed until he reached home.

He hunched down now, happy he'd brought the jacket. It really was freezing in this waiting room. They needed their very own Zhou Xing to come and liven things up around here.

And as he stewed over the faulty room temperature, the door at the opposite side of the room opened and a lady poked her head through. She was short, grey-haired, squinting through her horn-rimmed glasses.

"KYOUYA TATEGAMI", she shrieked into the waiting room.

_Relax, lady, I'm the only one here... _

But instead of saying it, Kyouya followed her, hunched into his jacket like Igor, sticking his bottom lip out like a shelf.

Luckily the actual office was less of a disappointment than the waiting room had been.

A considerably younger and hopefully less screechy lady sat on the chair at the small sitting area towards the east of the room, with a great window that overlooked the street below. The lady had a small badge on her shirt that said "Natasha Hadinglass, doctor of Psychology."

Kyouya stood uncomfortably at the edge of the throw rug, staring through the slatted shades concealing the window, until Natasha gestured to the chair across from her. Then he got to sit uncomfortably.

"I BROUGHT YOU YOUR NEXT HOPELESS NOBODY", screeched the old lady.

"Thank you, Mildred. You may leave now."

"WHATEVER", she screeched, "HE'LL JUST END UP A HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT LIKE THE REST, WITH NO JOB, WORKING AT A FAST FOOD PLACE..."

On and on she shrieked, audible long after her sizeable afro had disappeared down the hall. Natasha turned her embarrassed attention back to Kyouya, her cheeks flushing a slight pink underneath her makeup.

"SO, young man, what seems to be troubling you?"

"You'd never believe me if I told you."

"Then why are you here?" She turned to the window with a cryptic smile, standing now, glancing through the slats at the building across the way.

"I have...no idea."

"I think you have a good idea. And the reason you're here isn't because your friends pushed you here", she added before he could protest. "You're here because you genuinely believe that somewhere within the walls of this building is someone who can get you out of trouble."

"Uh...sure. Just keep telling yourself that." Kyouya shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of the jacket, the filmy lining clinging to his knuckles and the oak leaf crunching softly as it broke around the edges.

Natasha sighed. "Let's start with the jacket. Why are you wearing it?"

"Because your office is freezing over."

Natasha frowned, unamused. "Young man, it's nearly August. That jacket is purely for sentimental reasons, isn't it."

"My name's Kyouya. Not 'young man'."

"Okay, Kyouya, answer the question."

"I'm wearing it because it belonged to a...a friend."

"A friend."

"Yes."

And so Natasha pushed and pried, little by little, opening him up one question at a time like nobody had ever done before. Taking to him like a knife to a tin can.

All the details of Benkei's death came spilling out of him, and then how Yu had inexplicably drowned in a swimming pool. And then came the hardest questions of all - about why he was here, and not at the grief counsellor's down the street from his house.

"Because I've already gone there..."

"I'm not a grief counsellor, Kyouya. You know that, it says that on the business card. You're here for some other reason, it's something...something inside you that you've never revealed to anybody. You're hiding something deep in your heart that's eating you up from the inside, that you just can't reveal for the safety of your reputation and sanity...a secret that only your mind could hold and know. There's something connected to that grief inside of you. Guilt, or blame placed upon somebody else. What are you feeling, Kyouya? Tell me. You wouldn't be here if not to find somebody to open up to."

She had seen many grieving people in the past - those mourning for their husbands and wives, their children, their pets and the lives they'd once known, even for the children they used to be. Each one of them had come to her not because their grief was killing them inside, but because they somehow blamed themselves or the ones around them for the losses nobody could have ever prevented. She was prepared to give this time-honoured lecture over and over again until every last person in the city had spilt their grief over to her, Natasha Hadinglass, prepared to cure each one of them of the broken hearts of their pasts and help them return to a normal life.

But she wasn't prepared for Kyouya.

Was anybody ever prepared for Kyouya?

So when the secrets of his tortured dreams came flooding out of him, she sat down heavily in the chair across from him, listening with every nerve and fibre of her being. Because this case was unlike anything she'd ever heard of before. He wasn't schizophrenic, nor bipolar nor autistic. All these things she knew how to cope with and bring into the light, grow and trim and cut down to the standards of normal living, but no. Kyouya was not any of these things.

He was psychic.

The mind of a psychologist is attuned to certain things: science, the unbelievable, the unexplainable. But Natasha riffled through the libraries of her intelligence and came up with no other answer. And she knew she might've gone through every book on psychology in her library, every book in the universe, and find nothing medically possible to diagnose this phenomenon.

Any other doctor might've diagnosed it as grief-brought suffering; the loss of two loved ones and a national crisis, going to the head of a young self-conscious teenaged boy who swore he'd dreamt about it beforehand, finding another reason to blame himself for the grief he felt inside.

But Kyouya could not be lying. You could see it in the contours of his face, the sleepless nights and the leaf in his pocket, that what he'd been experiencing was purely and completely unfabricated.

It was not a matter of evidence. Natasha just _knew. _

Standing abruptly, and watching the clumsy boy follow haltingly in her wake, she trotted over to a shelf along the wall and took out a sketch pad.

"Take this, and go home. If you have any more dreams, write them down, and then call me right away. I'll be here. You've come to the right psychologist." She practically shoved him out the door. Mildred appeared as if by magic, pushing him along.

"YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT, GIT! GIT OUT OF HERE AND GO RUIN YOUR LIFE WITH THE REST OF YOUR GENERATION..."

Kyouya hurriedly pushed himself out of earshot of the shrieking old lady.

As he neared the house he was sharing the the Haganes, he could see Zhou Xing outside of the little apartment down the street where Tsubasa lived, tossing little pebbles at a window.

As he stood still on the street, sketch pad in his hands and a frown on his face, Tsubasa poked his head out the window.

"Hey, quit that, you!"

"Come down here!"

"NO."

Zhou Xing rested his hands on his hips and shook his head. "You're going to throw away the rest of your life, standing up there like that."

"Quit bothering me." Tsubasa turned away from the window, in answer getting hit in the back of the head with a pebble. He whirled in fury. "HEY!"

"Listen to me. Come down here. You're going to end up a skeleton and then you're going to look back on your life with more regrets than you could ever have imagined."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Tsubasa, I'm a grief counsellor."

"Go away." Tsubasa turned again, only to be pelted with gravel.

"QUIT IT!"

"You gotta come out and live a little. It's the only thing that'll help you." Zhou Xing flicked more gravel at Tsubasa.

"WHY YOU - !"

Zhou Xing chuckled. The sound of Tsubasa pelting down the stairs could be heard from within the apartment. And then he burst out in a rage.

"So long, man", Zhou Xing yelled at Kyouya, and then raced away with a furious eagle on his tail.

Kyouya shook his head and looked down at the sketch pad. Hopefully he would never have to use it.


	12. Cherry blossoms

Hey all, just want to tell you I'm registered as a beta reader now, so if you need help, contact me! :D

* * *

The hours of the days no longer seemed to drag on as much. Once you got past Mildred and the freezing waiting room, visits with Natasha were not so bad. Kyouya had been sure she'd disbelieve him and shun him.

Instead she'd stayed up all night after he left, sifting through medical journals and psychological dictionaries. Now over and over she had him repeat his stories, digesting every detail and looking up every possible explanation.

After a while she moved on from the possibility of a diagnosis to the possibility of something yet undiscovered, studying, taking notes, researching constantly. August drifted on unnoticed.

After Zhou Xing's scheme to get Tsubasa out of his apartment, Kyouya saw him trailing behind the other occupants of room 513, listless at first; but as the days passed on, Kyouya could see new light in his friend's eyes.

One day they met at the memorial. Kyouya was going there to make sure nobody'd stolen the little stone bull or the wooden bat, and he concealed himself behind the trunk of the oak tree as Tsubasa walked up.

The cite of his attention was the evergreen tree. Nestled beneath the spreading limbs of the oak, a stray acorn or two nestled in its frail needles, it would someday grow strong with Benkei's tree to protect it from harsh sun and battering rain. Kyouya only hoped that Tsubasa could someday grow strong again too.

* * *

_There's a car_

_I can see a car_

_It's Maya's car the little hybrid one_

_the solar powered one_

_It's going down the street oh no - there's a little boy there...he has a ball and it's going in the street_

_STOP MAYA STOP YOU'RE GOING TO CRASH_

_she's swerving she's going too fast_

_oh watch out Maya_

_Oh no_

_Oh please no_

_her car_

_it crashed it's like a tin can all crumpled up and I can't see her inside._

_Oh no...Maya..._

* * *

Kyouya woke up on the hardwood floor with sunlight streaming in over his face, more tired than when he'd fallen asleep. Frantically he reached for the sketch pad beside him and jotted down a quick description of what he'd seen in his dream.

Then he called Natasha.

"Hello?"

Unlike him, Natasha sounded completely awake.

"I had another dream."

"You did!? What happened in it?"

"My friend, Maya, crashed her car. Oh no. Maya. I have to see where she is, it might be too late..." Kyouya had learned that sometimes only a few hours' time passed between the dream and the reality.

"I'll call you back." He hung up and called Tobio. Maya hardly ever answered her phone because she said they were a 'distraction'.

"Hello?"

Finally someone sleepier than he was.

"Where's Maya?"

"What time is it?"

"8:10."

"She'll be walking out of the coffee shop, the vegan one a few streets down from you, going towards her car on the way to work."

"Thanks."

In a few minutes Natasha was at the house, and they were racing towards the street where Maya would be.

Maya glanced at them through the window of her hybrid and rolled her eyes at Kyouya. She probably thought he was trying to annoy her.

"We have to save her before it's too late", gasped Kyouya.

There.

There a few yards ahead was the little boy with his red ball. Maya glanced back at the road and gasped.

"NO MAYA NO DON'T SWERVE JUST TURN AT THE INTERSECTION - "

Maya's mouth opened in a wordless scream. Kyouya tried to run into the road but he wasn't as fast as that little hybrid.

_CRASH_

As the dust cleared, Kyouya could just make out the crumpled remains of the silver hybrid, crushed against the wall of a building.

Maya was still inside.

"Oh no. Oh no..." Kyouya and Natasha raced up to the hybrid, tugging at the mangled doors and trying to glimpse through the shards of metal. Kyouya could just make out Maya's dark dreadlocks hanging over the backseat where the trunk used to be.

Paramedics arrived a few minutes later to find Kyouya and Natasha sitting defeated against the curb, and a red ball bouncing by itself in the street...

* * *

Kyouya walked up to the memorial, watching the reddened oak leaves come swirling down softly with the beginnings of autumn. He found a curly blond head kneeling beside the tree.

Tobio had come.

He stood, still unaware of Kyouya, and looked down at the little cherry sapling embedded in the fresh earth, with a moon engraved into its ash-grey trunk. A tree for Maya.

"It's pretty", murmured Kyouya softly.

"It's what she would've wanted..."

The two friends stood silently in the miniature forest. An oak, an evergreen, and a cherry tree. Sweet like Maya and trustworthy too. The smoke-marred ceiling of the room that once was was nearly obscured by the boughs of the oak reaching towards the blue sky, while the beginnings of crawling ivy sprouted at the base of the walls, threatening to choke the door until it was no longer accessible.

Someday, Kyouya feared, this little green space would fill up completely. It would look pretty, but it was only a reminder of the pieces of their hearts that could never be recovered.


	13. SOS

Cythia Romero belongs to SabrinaNotscha.

* * *

Natasha didn't see him again for a few weeks.

He figured she was downright spooked from the experience. There was no explanation for it.

Tobio could be found every day watering the little tree as the air grew colder, humming softly, not crying. Tobio was handling the death of his best friend fairly well; Zhou Xing hadn't even had to throw rocks at his window yet.

Tsubasa seemed happier as the days wore on, and things seemed that they could someday go back to normal. Or as normal as they could ever really be.

Then one day, Kyouya got a phone call. He'd been sitting on the couch watching TV, looked down, and the caller ID said "Natasha Hadinglass."

He knew Natasha was off on Tuesdays. So what could it be? He answered the phone to hear Mildred's voice shrieking at him.

"HEY. YOU. NOBODY. COME OVER HERE THE DOCTOR WANTS TO TALK TO YOU!"

"Ok, okay. Goodness. I'm not deaf, Mildred."

"NOT IF I HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT, YOU GOOD-FOR-NOTHING HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT -"

Kyouya hung up the phone quietly and headed down the road towards Natasha's office.

He stood in the cold waiting room, shifting uncomfortably, until Mildred burst through the door and squinted at him through her horn-rimmed glasses.

He cocked his head and squinted back at her.

After a moment, she screeched, "WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT!?"

"I don't know."

"GIT IN THAT OFFICE KID BEFORE I PUT YA THERE!"

Kyouya hopped past her and she kicked him in the foot, spurring him on evilly. He glared over his shoulder at her and continued to the office.

He opened the door to find 3 people there instead of one.

Sitting with Natasha were two girls, perhaps his age. One with her brown hair in a topknot and the other with long blond hair. 3 people turned collectively and blinked at him, and he noticed how frog-like the brown haired girl's eyes were.

"Sit down, Kyouya, there's someone I want you to meet."

"HAVE FUN YOU BUNCH OF WEIRDOS" screeched Mildred, and stomped away.

"She's in a good mood today", said Natasha without a hint of sarcasm.

Then she turned her attention to Kyouya. "Hi, Kyouya. There's someone I'd like you to meet."

The blond girl stood an extended her hand quickly. "Hi." The smaller girl quickly mirrored her: "Hi."

Kyouya didn't know which hand to shake first, so he didn't. "Uh, hi."

He noticed that each girl wore a necklace with a laminated ID card on the end. The blond girl: Cythia Romero, and the smaller one Mal Hopeman.

Cythia crossed her arms. "Well, you're rude. Not shaking hands. What kind of caveman did you bring us, Natasha?"

"I'm going to leave you in their hands now."

Natasha left. Briefly Kyouya contemplated falling on his knees and begging her: TAKE ME WITH YOU...

But he decided to see what would happen if he stayed. The Great Kyouya did not back down from a fight.

"Sit down", Cythia said firmly. So Kyouya sat, wary of any evil spikes in the chair that might kill him.

"Okay. I'm going to introduce myself now", Cythia announced, in case anyone might try to stop her. "I am Cythia Romero of S.O.S. That stands for the Surveillance of the Supernatural, more commonly known as the S team. We work for the government, and you, Kyouya, have caught our attention."

"Ah. And should I be counting this as a fortune, or a misfortune?"

"It all depends on you." Cythia smiled mysteriously. "May I continue?...Now. This is Mallory Hopeman. She's the tech girl for the S team. In the next few days, we're going to be bringing in our other representatives: Tai, Zayne, Sabrina, Griffin, and Luis."

"Basically, you're going to dissect my brain."

"Don't tempt me", Cythia said flatly. "Each of us has a unique strength that we're going to use to try and help you, Ok? So just...TRY and cooperate. As well as Mildred, if you can handle that."

"Oh, you guys are a blast."

"Mal, you're in charge. I'm going to go scream ELSEWHERE so that the guts of our dear friend here don't end up on the upholstery."

"Don't mind her", Mal said softly after Cythia was gone.

"Hard not to."

"Don't take it personally. She just doesn't like you."

"Oh, no, of COURSE I can't possibly take that personally."

For the next couple of hours, Kyouya was subjected to telling and re-telling his bizarre story to Mallory and Cythia. Cythia left the room at regular intervals to cool off, finding Kyouya somehow more infuriating than even Mildred. Briefly he wondered who would win in a screeching contest, and decided it would have to be Cythia.

Finally the girls let him go, with the daunting promise of seeing him again soon.


	14. Nick of time

As unappealing as it was to spend his afternoons cooped up in an office with Mallory, Cythia, and Mildred, Kyouya found that he had no other choice. No other hope at all.

He only hoped they could find some way to stop all the deaths before there was no more room in the corner lot.

One day a boy with rusty red hair came in and stuck a little doohickey on his ear which, he explained, would scan his brain for any abnormalities. Kyouya did not find that comforting.

The red haired boy, he later learned, was Zayne, the true brains behind SOS. He saw him often now, clipping little metal devices just under the lip of the roof outside the office or standing on the shoulders of another boy to reach the shingles - Luis, the muscle behind the S team.

Every day a new member of team SOS appeared, assuring Kyouya that they were closer and closer to figuring out his 'condition'. Sabrina arrived late one afternoon, bringing with her the chilly wind of the approaching autumn. She was the leader and strength of the S team, confident and friendly. Behind her quickly followed Griffin Elderbloom, the handy boy for SOS. The only one missing now was Tai.

Every afternoon the little psychology office was filled with team SOS, checking readouts and flipping through textbooks, asking questions and stating theories. Kyouya felt like he was the centre of a science experiment.

Often he would hike out to the little corner office for an escape from the hubbub, ditching sessions and annoying Cythia to death. One day Mallory followed him, wanting to see the little forest growing beneath the roof.

Now the ivy had sprouted up to the doorknob, and the wooden bat grew scratched and tarnished by the wind. Kyouya placed in on a lower branch where it could be better sheltered. The moon carved deep into the trunk of the little cherry tree remained steadfast, though the tree was without its blossoms now.

He found the old jacket of Benkei's came in handy for the chilly fall days where it seemed closer to winter, and Mallory and Sabrina often wondered aloud if it would snow soon.

* * *

_Is that tires screeching that I can hear_

_like the scream of the wind but scarier_

_when that happens a lot of times the police come, when that happens a lot of times someone gets hurt. Hurt like Maya._

_But instead of Maya it's Ryuga I can see now, but standing on the curb instead of in the car_

_he has a cup of coffee he's about to spill it_

_he is crossing the street_

_Look out, Ryuga, it's a bus - but - he doesn't hear_

_He is gone_

_crushed beneath its big wheels and I can't see him now_

_but it's just because I can't stand to see him on the pavement_

* * *

Kyouya blinked. He must've fallen asleep while Griffin and Luis were discussing aliens.

All of a sudden Tai blew in with the wind, her black hair frazzled and shaggy around her face.

"Man, this autumn's gonna be a killer", she commented heartily, joining her sister Sabrina in front of a whiteboard. Tai had finally arrived.

Kyouya rubbed his eyes and grabbed Zayne by the arm as he passed by.

"Zayne. I had another vision."

All the eyes in the room turned on him.

"What?"

Quickly, stumbling over his own words, Kyouya relayed the story and ran to find his phone. If it was the same as with Maya, Ryuga might be dead within seconds.

"What?" Ryuga said irritably when he answered the phone.

"Where are you?"

"Huh?"

"I said, where are you."

"I'm at the Mercury building about to leave. Why?"

"Do you have a coffee cup in your hand?"

"Yes."

"Were you planning on taking the long way home?"

Ryuga sighed. "Yes, Kyouya."

"The one that goes by Main street - "

"YES."

"Take the short way."

"Why?"

"There's going to be a bus crash on Main street and you'll hear it on the news tonight. Just trust me."

"Uh...ok."

Kyouya set down the phone, sighing and lowering his head, relieved, as Cythia raced up to him.

"What do you think you're doing, just running off in the middle of stuff like that!? You need to be here so we can STUDY YOU."

Kyouya turned angrily to Cythia. "Listen here, Cythia. I'm a human, not a test subject!"

"Coulda fooled me!"

"Sorry, Cythia. But I'm done for the day."

Kyouya stood, tucking his phone into his pocket, and stalked out the door, not listening to Cythia's yells of, "Hey! You can't do that! HE CAN'T DO THAT! Can he?"

Kyouya got home, and found Ryuga standing outside waiting for him.

"What are you doing here?"

"I came to watch that so-called 'news report'. Because if it's not true, I'm gonna bust your head in."

"Just try, buddy."

Kyouya stepped past him and unlocked the door. "It should be on the evening news. Go to your own apartment and watch it."

"I want YOU to be the first thing I think of to punch when it happens, not my lamp."

That's how Kyouya found himself having a staring contest with Ryuga in Gingka Hagane's kitchen at 4:30 PM.

Their glasses of milk sat untouched on the tabletop between them, and finally they both blinked at the same time, rubbing their watering eyes and groaning with pain.

Then they moved on to rock, paper, scissors. It only lasted them until 4:45. Kyouya won.

"You're boring me, Kyouya."

"That's a way overused villain line, you know."

"I know."

"You're wasting my time."

"You say that way too much."

"Well there are a lot of things around here that are a big waste of time, you know."

"Like cats."

"Cats are NOT a waste of time", Kyouya said defensively as Riley walked past, mewling in indignation.

"You're a waste of time, Tategami."

"Then why are you even here?"

"So I can hit you later for wasting my time."

Kyouya glanced at the clock. It was 4:50.

"The evening news doesn't come on until 6."

"Maybe it'll be on the afternoon news."

"No. Evening, it has to be."

"Okay."

"What are you guys doing?"

Gingka peered around the corner of the hallway, where he'd been listening quietly for the past half-hour.

"Nothing", both boys snapped angrily.

"So put on a movie or something."

"I want to watch a movie", Gingka said hopefully.

"Fine. You pick. Ryuga'll just pick something lame", Kyouya told him.

"Like a whale documentary."

"Exactly."

"You're lame, Tategami."

"My name is Kyouya, for your information."

The three of them sat in awkward silence on the couch in the living room. Then:

"I hate movies."

"You hate everything, Ryuga", Gingka said.

"No, I don't. I'm just misunderstood."

"You're a doctor, too, apparently", said Gingka, "Wearing that lab coat all the time. Or a pharmacist, maybe."

"That makes you a pigeon, what with that scarf."

"That makes no sense, DOCTOR RYUGA."

"You make no sense."

"That's lame."

"You're lame."

"You could both be lame", Kyouya suggested.

"YOU'RE LAME", Gingka and Ryuga both yelled at him.

The hours passed in tension, nobody really paying much attention to the movie except for Gingka, who was crying at the end.

"Oh, Stepheny...Whyyy..."

"Like I said. Lame."

Then the evening news came on, and Ryuga sat up straighter.

"I'm Halle Victoral, reporting live at the site of a brutal bus crash on Main street", said Victoral, her face blown up huge on the Haganes' flat screen.

Kyouya smirked at Ryuga.

"Luckily the children were all home and the bus driver, suspected of being drunk, was the only one in the vehicle. However, on further inspection, it was found that the bus driver was completely sober, and nothing was wrong with the bus. The driver, mister Thoroughfield, says that all of a sudden it was like a haze came down on his mind and he crashed into the wall. Luckily nobody was hurt. All the people taking the long way home from the East side of town got lucky..."

Kyouya turned to Ryuga smugly. Halle Victoral had just proven his point.

Ryuga's eyes rolled back into his head and he fainted. Better than being a tree under a roof, Kyouya thought grimly.


	15. Down with the ship

Okay everybody, I have some news for y'all. It's not good.

I'm sure all of you know of dear FlameSolaria, a sweet and adventurous author here on this site. She's considerate in her reviews and writes fun stories, like Flame's House of Randomness. But Flame has a cancer tumour and is being operated on soon, and won't be updating for 2 weeks.

Now I ask you as a friend of Flame's and a caring Christian to keep her in your prayers. Being operated on is a scary thing and I'm sure we'll all be wishing Flame the best outcome possible and a successful operation.

Thanks so much, you guys.

-Malluchan

* * *

As autumn drew closer to winter and the days grew shorter, it seemed that the S team was coming no closer to solving Kyouya's predicament.

The oak tree at the Mercury building was leafless now, as well as the cherry tree. But the little evergreen flourished daily. Kyouya could see it from where he sat on the largest limb of Benkei's oak, reaching up to the sky and striving to become bigger.

Mallory had taken to following him around these days, just like Benkei. Never asking for anything, just wandering around in his wake like a lost little kitten. She looked on in wonder at the tiny cluster of trees and copied a lot of the things he did. One day he asked her:

"What's the deal, kid? Why do you keep on following me around?"

"Sabrina said I should observe you", Mal answered dutifully.

"I'm not a specimen."

"I know you're not a cinnamon - "

"SPECIMEN."

"Specimen. But Sabrina said, and we all have to listen to her. She's the BOSS", Mal insisted.

"Cythia seems more like the boss of the operation."

"No, Cythia's just a bossy person. She's not the BOSS. And she doesn't like you."

"I know. You told me."

"Tai says she has to be nicer, but she never listens."

"Bye now." Kyouya hopped down off the oak tree and started home, finding Mal still trailing behind him.

"Mal. You can stop that now."

"Sabrina said - "

"I don't care what Sabrina said. Stop observing me."

"Okay."

Kyouya kept on going, but found after a few minutes that Mal was still behind him.

"Mal. STOP IT."

"I'm not observing you anymore!"

"Then why are you following me!?"

"Because, I don't know the way back to the office."

So Kyouya had to take Mallory back to the office.

"Now stay here. No more observing."

"Okay."

At last Kyouya could walk home in peace.

* * *

_Oh no_

_oh no it's happening again_

_I can see_

_a plane_

_I can see a plane, the inside of one, I'm in the plane - _

_Oh look, it's Demorae._

_And Nile. Why are they here? Oh yeah, they were coming for the winter so they could see what snow looked like again._

_But there's lights on, all around, they're not supposed to be on. The emergency lights. The plane it's the plane it's going down - _

_It's okay, it's okay, there's parachutes on the seats but Nile's on his phone he's talking to someone... and now he's hanging up_

_oh hurry up Nile and just pull out the parachute or you'll die._

_He's pulling on it all the seats are detaching but it's not coming out - there's only concrete under us concrete from the runway we just passed the fence_

_NO NILE DEMORAE NEITHER OF THE PARACHUTES ARE WORKING_

_they're gone they're gone oh I can't look any more _

* * *

Kyouya blinked several times, focusing back on the TV. He's just lapsed into tunnel vision suddenly, seeing things happen...

Oh no.

DeMorae and Nile were probably boarding that plane right now, on their way over to Japan for the holidays. If he didn't stop them all would be lost.

His phone was out of battery.

He plugged it into the wall hurriedly and then grabbed Tsubasa's phone - but Tsubasa's phone didn't have Nile's number on it.

He rushed around for the next few hours, trying to find somebody who knew Nile's phone number, but nobody did. By the time he got back home his phone was charged. He grabbed it and found the contact, called hurriedly...it couldn't be too late yet...

"Hello?" Nile voice crackled through the phone.

"Nile, are you on the plane already?"

"Yes. I can see the runway from here, in fact. Are you coming to pick us up?"

"What side of the plane are you on?"

"The left side, why?"

"Move to different seats, hurry. The plane's about to crash."

"But the empty seats, the pilot said, the parachutes aren't working."

Kyouya recalled his dream. "Are they in front of you?"

"Directly."

He remembered that the seats in front of Nile and DeMorae's had worked, billowing white film out. "They'll work. Don't worry."

"I don't know, Kyouya - "

"Please, just trust me!"

"O...okay." He could hear DeMorae and Nile scuffling about to get to the seats in front of them, and then the whooop...whoooop...of the emergency sirens.

He'd gotten them safe, he sagged back in his chair, relieved.

Gingka's dad would be driving out to the airport in a few minutes to pick them up, and they'd be safe. Kyouya had saved them this time.

* * *

Kyouya heard his phone ring from the living room and dove for it. "Hello?"

"Kyouya, there...there's been an accident at the airport..." it was Ryo.

"Yeah, the plane crashed. I heard. But the seats had parachutes on them, didn't they?"

"Well...some of the parachutes didn't work. 5 or 6 people died out there. Two of them..." Kyouya slammed the phone shut. It couldn't be true. The seats had been supposed to work.

Unless...the person Nile was on the phone with, in his vision...had been him.

Maybe the reason they had been in seats that didn't work was because he'd told them to move in the first place. Kyouya cried out and fell onto the couch. He couldn't believe that they'd lost two more friends and he hadn't been able to do anything about it.

* * *

Kyouya poured mulch around the roots of the cedar tree, glancing over to where Mallory and Gingka worked quietly on a little birch.

_A forest left in the city there stood_

_A memorial of all that was peaceful and good_

_Filling up slowly as the months there pass'd_

_For the friends that we loved who rested at last _

Kyouya stood and fastened the little plywood board more firmly around the trunk, the board with a Vulcan emblazoned in red. A few steps over, Mal hung a banner of a scorpion from the lowest branch of the birch tree, new and vibrant now.

_5 little trees at the bend in the road _

_We planted them to make our affection known_

_A bird and a bat and a moon and a bull_

_and a scorpion; our eyes were full_

_and our hearts were sad but yet we knew_

_that peace had finally found its way to you _

The trees were getting a bit squished beneath the awning of ivy now, and soon their roots would tangle. Maya would have known better than anyone how to properly plant them.

_Ring death's doorbell and run away_

_But he finally chased you down that day_

_You knew you were playing a dangerous game_

_That death always wins in the end all the same_

_Now you're resting deep in the ground_

_Finally peaceful_

_Safe and sound _

Even Cythia had to cry.

Kyouya, Gingka, and the S team stood around the little cluster of trees, growing month after month, eyes wet and heads bowed in respect. Even Luis had removed his beloved Aggies cap and slumped mournfully at the edge of the lot.

And one bye one they turned to go back home. Their winter had been sobered, and every time Kyouya saw snow, he would now remember the birch and the cedar standing side by side in the lot at the corner of the Mercury building...


	16. Escape

Kyouya woke one morning to a strange sound coming from the Haganes' living room. With a tired groan, he burrowed deeper into the duvet, able to feel the freezing chill radiating off the attic window. The window box heater wasn't doing its job very well; even sleeping in Benkei's oversized jacket was doing him no favours.

Just as he was about to drift off into sleep, he heard Gingka's voice yelling up the attic stairs. "KYOUYA! WAKE UP!"

Kyouya grumbled something illegible and rolled out of bed, lying on the floor for a minute before the cold got to him. He stood and pulled the jacket tighter around him, then stumbled down the stairs.

"Good gravy. It's colder in here than outside", he mumbled.

"Heater's broken. Come see this."

He trudged into the living room where Gingka and Tsubasa were fixated on the TV set. He looked over to the screen and found...

Global Devastation.

Halle, the reporter, was crying out in panic on the screen.

"Everybody, Everybody! I urge you to listen to this urgent news report!

"Seemingly natural disasters have swept over the earth, tsunamis on almost every shoreline if the whirlwinds didn't get to them first. Mysterious earthquakes and car pileups. But what's so very unnatural about all of this? ONLY THE PEOPLE AND ANIMALS WERE TAKEN!

"That's right. Global disasters of this magnitude should be taking up everything in their path. Houses should be crushed, trees should be killed by the gases released from the earth. But no. ONLY THE LIVING CREATURES ARE AFFECTED!

"I urge you to get to shelter immediately. House in bomb shelters, barricade your basements. Go someplace with no windows. Buy out our grocery stores. No matter what the president says; this is no time for our nation to remain calm. Stack up hoards of food against the walls, triple, no, DECA-bolt the doors and windows and hope that somehow you survive. I'm Halle Victoral, reporting to you for the last time."

Gingka switched off the TV. "Kyouya. Your phone's ringing."

Kyouya grabbed the phone and held it numbly to his ear, barely hearing Tai's voice as she yelled at him through the earpiece.

"Kyouya! Kyouya, are you getting this!? Kyouya, you need to come to the psychology office right away. Run and don't stop. Not for ANYTHING. Kyouya?"

"Okay."

"And bring all your friends too. Pack bags with the things most precious. GET GOING! We don't have much time!"

Tai hung up on her end of the phone.

The next 10 minutes passed in a blur. Kyouya was rushed upstairs and back down with a duffel bag of stuff, then had to stand waiting in the living room for Mr. Hagane for another 3 minutes. As the rushed out the door, they were met by a small crowd of people coming their way.

Their small group now consisted of: Zhou Xing, Kyouya, Masamune, Tsubasa, Ryuga, Gingka and his dad, Hikaru, Madoka, Kenta, Kevin, and Tobio.

Kyouya looked up and down the street and gasped with horror.

The entire block across from them was gone. Sunk into the ground without a trace, only burnt earth indicating that anything had ever been there at all.

"We better hurry", muttered Ryo.

They hurried down the street, and Kyouya fully expected an alien ship to come crashing down. The eerie silence was broken only by a few frantic people running around, and no cars. Kyouya watched as one person ran into a building, only to be crushed by its collapsing ceiling a moment later; it was almost as if Metal City had become a ghost town.

The remains of cars lay smoking on the road. Halle Victoral didn't know the half of what she was dealing with.

At the doors of the psychology office, Kyouya stopped abruptly behind Masamune and peered over his shoulder, rather annoyed.

There were no doors to the psychology office.

There WAS no psychology office.

It had fallen in on itself.

The S team came charging around the corner.

"Good, you're here", Sabrina gasped. "We don't have much time."

Kyouya looked around.

"Where's Griffin?"

Cythia buried her face in her hands and Tai gave him a grim look. "Natasha went back to get Mildred, and then Griffin went back to get Natasha, and only Mildred made it out."

"I DON'T LIKE THE APOCALYPSE", Mildred screeched.

"We should go", Zayne said softly.

"Where are we going to go? There's no place in this city that's safe", Tsubasa commented.

"That's why we're going to Tokyo. Being a part of a government project, we have a bunker there that we keep stocked up in case of emergency. There's plenty of room for all of us there until we figure out a way to get off this planet."

"What do you mean by that?" Ryuga muttered. "It's not like we can live on Mars."

"That's not what I meant."

"Well, how are we going to get there? We can't take any paths, they'll collapse under us."

"Quit being so sceptical, tiara man. We'll be walking through the subways. None of the buses are running, and a route runs straight the 50 miles to Tokyo."

"My name is NOT tiara man."

Cythia chuckled. "You're funny."

"Let's get going."

"Wait a second", Tsubasa objected, rooted to the spot. "What if it collapses over us?"

"It won't. Mallory will protect us."

"WHAT!?"

Sabrina sighed, stepping forward. "Listen, you guys...part of being an organisation for the investigation of the supernatural is that, well..."

"We are the supernatural", Tai finished softly, fingering her locket nervously. "I really don't like the look of this place, it's like the sky could fall at any minute..."

"There's a subway entrance over there." Luis pointed across the street.

Before anybody had time to ask what exactly Tai had meant by 'supernatural', they were hurrying after Sabrina across the street.

The subway entrance was dark, damp and cold, sealed as if it had been a tomb for over a thousand years. Masamune half expected a mummy to crawl out and strangle them.

"It's dark", whimpered Kevin, clinging to Ryuga's jacket. Ryuga brushed him off lightly. "It's fine, Kevin."

The subway door shut behind them with a soft and menacing _swoosh_; Kyouya figured Luis had shut it as he came through. He only hoped that was the case.

Up ahead of them, Sabrina and Tai turned on their torches, beams of light slicing through the dark briefly before being swallowed up.

"We just follow the tracks east", Sabrina murmured softly. "They'll eventually lead us to Tokyo.

"I DON'T LIKE THE DARK", screeched Mildred suddenly, making them all jump. Kyouya shook his head at her disapprovingly while Ryuga grumbled behind him.

As the minutes passed, Kyouya concentrated on the swinging shape of Tsubasa's guitar case in front of him and the soft noises of the subway tunnels, wishing there was built-in lights here.

An hour dragged on and Zayne fell into step beside him in the back. Without noticing they'd come into a formation with the girls and kids in the centre and the older boys around them, thus Sabrina, Hikaru, Tai, Cythia, Madoka, Kenta, and Kevin were in the middle with Masamune, Gingka, Zhou Xing, Kyouya, Tsubasa, Ryuga, Luis, Ryo, and Zayne surrounding them, and Mildred floating around somewhere from time to time.

"How long does it take to get there?" Kyouya asked the genius of the S team.

"Well, Tokyo is about 50 miles outside of Metal City. In the U.S. Army, the 50-mile hike lasted 14 or 15 hours and was pretty extreme. They didn't really stop for breaks, I don't think. The average person could get there in about 18 hours, no stops, but we've got 5 girls, 2 kids, and an old lady. So we can count on this pretty much taking a day or more."

"I'M NOT OLD", Mildred screeched, directly into their ears. Kyouya shrieked and jumped, falling into Masamune, who fell on the ground and glared up at him.

"Sorry. MILDRED! WILL YOU QUIT IT!"

"I DON'T LIKE YOU, WORTHLESS BOY."

"Quit arguing with him, Mildred, he's never going to come around", Cythia muttered from somewhere to his left.

"Are we there yet?"

"No, Kevin."

"When will we be there?"

"Kevin. WE'LL GET THERE WHEN WE GET THERE", snarled Ryuga.

"Okay."

A few more minutes, and then: "I have to pee."

Kyouya sighed. It was going to be a long trip.


	17. Walk in the dark

_It's a_

_It's a_

_It's a earthquake_

_it's really loud and its right under me_

_its like shaking me and everything is rumbling and I'm falling oh my feet can't stand_

_up_

_i can see little Kevin crying in the dark_

_and I can see paws in front of me instead of feet what is this strange place?  
_

_It's Masamune this time I think who is going down with the ship because I can see him and I can hear him screaming or is that Madoka - _

_and the earth is opening up and swallowing him like he was lunch_

_and he's gone oh he's gone why why do I have to dream these things before they happen why_

* * *

Kyouya woke up gasping on day 2 of their prolonged trip through the subway station. True to nature, Mildred and Kevin were abominable to no end. Ryuga, however, refused to carry his nephew and thus provoked many unnecessary breaks.

Falling into step beside Zayne as usual, subject to hearing Tsubasa and Luis geek out about guitars again, Kyouya relayed his dream in a hushed voice. Zayne pondered it for a moment, and then murmured, "The bear could've been Luis."

"What? What bear? Oh. The paw."

"Yes. It's possible you were having the dream from his point of view. He turns into a bear sometimes", Zayne confided softly, as if this were a normal conversation. Kyouya decided to ignore it.

"Just keep a close eye on Masamune, and if you feel the earth shake, call Luis", Zayne said. "Luis is good in hard situations. He's strong and he can also see using heat sensing."

This peaked Kyouya's interest. "Tell me more about what Tai meant earlier...about you all being supernatural?"

"Okay, well...I'll start with Sabrina, since she's the leader.

"Sabrina is from a far-off dimension - that's why we all have these powers you know - and she can control the element of fire. She knows this organisation was started so that we could advance science and act as a sort of witness protection program, but the chief thing to her is that eam is family and safety of the team is her chief concern.

"Tai is from the same place, they're sisters. Tai is able to control the air."

"Like in Avatar."

"Yeah, it was believed that that series was written as a result of dimensional rifting, but that's a bunch of science talk you don't want to hear. Cythia can control two elements, water and earth.

"Luis is able to shape-shift into any type of bear. It's still unknown why, because he refuses to give a whit about his past or his home dimension. Mal can sprout wings and fly, turn invisible, and produce a 10-20 metre force field. That's what the girls meant about her protecting us should the subway fall.

"And Griffin can...could...run at a speed of 600 metres per second, see through obstacles, and project light."

Kyouya walked in silence for a moment, taking it all in. And then: "What's your power, Zayne?"

Zayne quickly ducked his head in the darkness. "Oh, nothing special."

Tai fell back with them. "Don't be so modest, Zayne. He has maybe the coolest set of powers you could wish for."

"Oh, no, I don't - "

"Sure you don't. Zayne has the powers of telekinesis and telepathy, besides his incredibly high intelligence. He is also able to pilot anything from a simple Chevrolet to an F-22 - that's a fighter plane - to an air motorcycle to an X-wing."

"Wow."

"Really, it's nothing," Zayne protested.

"He can levitate even HIMSELF."

"WHOA. Show me."

"What? NO, I..."

"Just levitate like a rock or something."

"But, but I - oh, ok, fine." You could see that through all that macho humbleness, Zayne was enjoying the attention.

"Watch this", he whispered softly.

Up ahead of them, Cythia and Sabrina shrieked suddenly. The rest of the group stopped in their tracks as two torch beams spun and played over their faces, zipping over their heads and landing in Zayne's hands.

Kyouya laughed in astonishment and amusement, and then Sabrina and Cythia stormed up and snatched the torches from Zayne.

"It was your fault, kitty menace", snapped Cythia before storming back to the front.

Luis grinned back at Zayne and gave him a thumbs-up, while Mildred shrieked, "I DON'T LIKE POSSESSED FLASHLIGHTS!"


	18. Scar in the earth

It had grown quiet lately, the girls and children and Mildred finally settling in to the rhythm of things, like the boys already had ages ago. Tobio had still managed to sneak his dumb bag of lollipops into his duffel bag before they left and was smacking on one noisily; Kyouya fought the urge to snap him in the back of the head.

Kevin had been complaining for hours and the fed-up Luis managed to convince Ryuga to carry Kevin on his back, like a 'pack horse', as Ryuga had put it.

"Well he's your nephew."

"I never asked for him to be my problem."

"His parents are dead, sicko. Take a little responsibility, will ya?"

"You wanna take him?"

"I just told YOU to take him."

"I DON'T LIKE THIS CONVERSATION", Mildred shrieked, her ancient voice ringing against the tattered walls of the subway tunnel.

So Mildred's screeching was good for something, Kyouya admitted.

He wondered dazedly how close to Tokyo they really were, and how on earth Sabrina would know when they got there.

All of a sudden, the ground started shaking.

Kyouya gasped and grabbed hold of the mildewed railings for support as the shaking grew more and more intense. He lost his footing and fell onto the tracks.

Far up ahead of him, he could hear screaming. Masamune. Or maybe Madoka. And a roar.

A large grizzly bear stood up at the front of the tunnel, on its hind paws, searching over the ground for Masamune. And then the tremors hit it too hard and it fell.

In the centre of it all a rift opened up, wide enough to encompass a shark, Kyouya was sure. Everyone managed to jump back before they fell in -

Everybody but Masamune.

Kyouya cried out in horror with the others as Masamune sank into the ground, as quickly as it took for a cat to flick its tail. And everything went deathly quiet.

Zayne grabbed Cythia's torch with a flick of his hand. She was too stunned to be indignant as it flew through the air towards his outstretched palm. He shone it down onto the ground where Masamune had disappeared.

A long scar had rippled through the concrete of the subway tunnel, a deep golden red, as if there truly was a scar ripped there that had healed over. The grizzly bear stood beside him, its head lowered mournfully. It let out a whumph of sadness.

"M-masamune..." Gingka gasped softly. There was no trace of their lethal-weapon-haired friend. Kyouya hadn't been able to save him, and neither had Luis.

He turned to Cythia. With the power to control the element of earth, she could've done something. But the angry words died in his throat as he saw the tears rolling from her eyes; she glared at him and turned away.

It seemed like ages before Sabrina spoke softly.

"Guys, we have to move on."

"But - but he just - "

"Gingka." The boy was silenced by the firmness in Sabrina's voice.

"I'm sorry, you guys. But this tunnel could collapse at any moment. We're no help to the situation if we stay here."

Sabrina turned back the way they were going and began to walk slowly down the tunnel, swinging her torch right and left in a wide arc as she went. Cythia hesitated for a moment before following, Mildred and Tai close behind her.

The grizzly bear was gone, and now Luis took its place. Kyouya wondered first how Sabrina could've left this place like that; but then he remembered how Zayne had said she always looked out for her family first. So he followed. He'd learned a lot about family in the past year and a half.

Before the scar in the earth melted into darkness behind Zayne's torch beam, he was certain that in the centre of it he had seen a smoky 7-pointed star, impossible but hauntingly familiar...


	19. Stowaway

For the next few hours they walked in silence, heavy, draping silence. Respect for the dead.

Zayne still walked beside Kyouya, but quietly now. Holding Cythia's torch which she'd never bothered to take back from him.

Kyouya kept glancing back, as if the rift with the star would somehow creep forward with them every step they took. But no need to see it again. It was burned on the backs of his eyelids like the glowing afterimage of the sun, after you stared at it for too long.

Just as his feet were growing heavy, and he heard Kev start snoring on Ryuga's back, Sabrina called back into the tunnel: "We're here!"

As the people before him seemed to disappear, Kyouya found himself at the bottom of a staircase that went up into the darkness. The exit of the subway. It was open already thanks to Luis's great strength, but the night sky showed through it. Kyouya thought it would've been morning.

The subway came out on the side walk before the remains of a crumbled building. But turning his head, Kyouya found a great mound of earth untouched above him.

A statue rested on top, one with a wooden horse necklace strung around its neck...

The Tokyo Meltdown Memorial.

Gingka was standing on the side of it on the way up. Kyouya watched as he took Masamune's necklace off of the top of the hill and wound back down between the flower bushes, and then the rusted cars still lying on the leaf-littered parking lot.

Nobody made a move to stop him. Masamune had been his best friend; if he needed the necklace to remember him by, it was his choice.

Sabrina led the group down the side-walk, instructing them all to stay in a tight bunch. Once again the older boys moved around the girls and kids, with the exception of Sabrina and Cythia, who stood out like headlights in the front of the group with their torches.

Kyouya looked around Tokyo. Not a light shone from the windows, nor a car drove on the street. Kyouya thought perhaps this great city might have a few people still moving in it, but either they were all dead or in hiding. Zayne said it was probably the first option.

Sabrina and Cythia came to a stop in front of a small building, low to the ground but wide and long all around. Luis stooped through the narrow doorway ahead of Kyouya, and everyone else followed him.

Railings surrounded the unlit room like in an elevator. Kyouya grabbed hold of them, assuming they would soon be moving.

Sure enough, Mal hit a button on the side of the room and they started to descend. Perhaps the building had lower floors. But, as Zayne explained when they stopped moving, the bunker had only two levels; the button served to carry the entire structure about 20 yards beneath the surface of the earth. It was safer to be there in the midst of an earthquake than on the surface.

Luis flipped on the lights, powered by generators beneath the floor, Zayne explained, as they walked through a wood-panelled hallway.

"In the past few years, the generators have been soaking up the sun to full capacity. Everything is solar powered. If we have to be here too long, we'll go up to the surface and put the panels on the ground; they're attached to wires that'll bring the energy back to the generators."

"What do you mean, if we have to be here too long?"

Zayne gave him a deep look. "I'll explain when we get to the lab."

"There will be no going to the lab tonight, Zayne", Tai said. "We all need to get a proper rest. Our internal clocks are knocked askew."

Zayne looked downcast. "That's what coffee's for, though..."

"Coffee is not your excuse to stay up late. Most likely the lab will still be there come morning."

Kyouya didn't like how she'd said "most likely".

Tai flipped open the door to another room, this one with dark wooden floors and walls painted a soft blue. There were windows, but all the shades were closed; there was nothing to see here except for one giant ant farm.

Cots lined the walls in a small square, and there was plenty of space on the floor. "We never expected to have to house this many", Tai explained, "But in the case of a larger crowd we've always kept extra blankets and pillows on hand." Across the hall was another room of similar setup: this one for the girls.

Kyouya swung his bag down onto the bed with a soft thump, ready to sleep. Pulling open the drawstring at the top of the bag, he expected to find his clothes and possessions at the top as usual.

Instead, Riley jumped out.

Kyouya shrieked in surprise. "RILEY! What are you doing here!?"

Riley flicked his tail and licked his paws. "Meow."

"You snuck a cat in here!?" Tobio was about to die laughing.

"No. I am completely sure he was NOT here when we left."

"He must've followed you to the subway and sneaked in your bag while you weren't looking", Zayne said.

"OH MY GOODNESS, IT'S A KITTY!" Sabrina was bouncing up and down in the doorway. Ryuga shut the door.

"Don't pay attention to her, she loves cats", Luis told them.

Riley prowled around for a moment before settling on the end of Kyouya's bed. Being boys, normally there would've been a fight about who got which cot. But all of them were too tired to act like males right now.

Kyouya fell onto the bed and was asleep almost instantly, Riley lying warm and furry across his feet, just like at home.


	20. Suddenly solution

Morning dawned bright and clear.

Not really. You couldn't see out the windows enough to really check.

Kyouya cracked open one eyelid to see Zayne swinging his feet off the bed and trotting silently out of the room with Riley in his wake. Kyouya stood and followed, zipping Benkei's jacket up to his neck. It was cold underground.

Zayne turned left, then left again, sock feet pattering down a narrow hallway of wood flooring and blue walls, just like the room they'd just been in. He opened a door and slipped inside.

Kyouya hesitated a moment, and then stepped in after him.

He came out into a lab.

At least it looked like a lab.

Long white tables were set from front to back, one of which Zayne was weaving his way around. It was not overlit like many scientific research facilities he'd seen on TV, but lit more like a library. Shelves lines the walls, folding from the doorway all the way around to the opposite side of the room, packed from floor to high ceiling with books and notebooks and vials and drawers, with library ladders running up and down here and there.

A small portion of the shelving was absent at the other side of the room, replaced by a wall of computer monitors. Several more laptops sat around the tables in various places, intervening the normal clutter of stacked papers, manuscripts, jars, and microscopes, littered all about with tiny metal parts and a couple pairs of goggles.

Zayne turned and saw him; Zayne seemed on edge. He stood now in front of the lit monitors, too far away to see what he was doing.

"Kyouya. You need to come see this."

Kyouya hurried over, careful not to knock anything off the tables.

"Look at this; this is the surface, only about 60 or 70 feet above us."

At first glance, the monitor showed hard, cold, leaf-littered fall earth. But then someone...or something...came into view.

When you looked in the beginning, you would've thought it was maybe a human or a dog, at the most a cosplayer. But no. Upon closer inspection, as Zayne toggled with the zoom lens, it was in short an alien.

Its skin was a pale and ghastly grey and its arms were carried close to its body like a bear's, its legs crouched and 6 spider-like eyes set on its elongated face. A noise came from the forest behind where the camera was placed, and the creature raised its head and bared its teeth.

Long, sharp teeth.

"There're 3 rows of those babies at least", Zayne whispered, as though it could hear them. And then it flicked out its tongue, long and green with a poisonous-looking purple barbed glob at the end.

"WHAT IS THAT!"

"Shh, you'll wake Sabrina. She doesn't like to be woken early. That's a regular inhabitant of Dimension 243."

"Then how on earth did it get here?"

Zayne went over and started fussing with one of the laptops. "That's what I don't know. The SOS, you see, is a part of an interdimensional protectional society that keeps the best interests of each dimension of the Unity in mind, protecting them from outside natural and war-based threats. Dimension 243 was overrun with these...things. They seem intent on taking up space and someday overpopulating the dimensions, ultimately destroying them.

"We kept a shield around their dimensiaverse that would stop them from leaving, and one around most of the others in the Unity - the unified complex of a fraction of the dimensions working to protect each other. But I 243's shield rifted, and so did ours.

"Normally the inhabitants of 243 would go for the easiest and closest travel-wise dimension, in this case the surrounding ones - 242, 244, 501, and 113. But ours is number 867. Nowhere close. So the others are either still under protection, or already overrun."

"Okay. That's just...bizarre."

"No kidding." Zayne smacked the laptop with the flat of his hand, annoyed with it that it wouldn't start up properly.

"Does this have anything to do with why I dream about dead people?" Kyouya stated frankly.

"Well, that's where this comes in..." Zayne smacked the laptop again and its screen flashed to life. "There. Works every time."

Cythia, Madoka, Sabrina, and Tai filed in around that time and assembled around the computer. "Show us what you got, Zayne."

Zayne pulled up a series of images. "Just before we lost Griffin, he and I figured out the crucial part to this mystery."

"Is it ESP?"

"No, Tai. I assure you that there is a completely scientific reason for what we've seen in this case. I managed to get the research thrown onto a flash drive just before we had to get out of the building, and I downloaded it onto this laptop through the bluetooth data port over there." Zayne gestured in the direction of the monitor wall.

"If you looked up into the skies above Tokyo and Metal City, you'd see clear blue, or grey, or any other appropriate colour for a sky. You wouldn't see a huge carrier ship. But Griffin and I managed to get the sonic transmitter working the day before we left. And we picked up this."

Full screen on the laptop, an image of the sky showed, but silhouetted against it was the outline of some huge craft.

"We rigged up the heat sensors just to make sure. And we got this."

A close-up heat image of the ship, outlined in cold black metal, with various shades of yellow and red where the engine would be.

"There's one of these above Metal City right now. And there's probably one over Tokyo. Over New York, Las Vegas, and Cupertino. There's probably one floating over Beijing, Phoenix, Del Rio, New Delhi, London, and Adelaide."

"What does this have to do with anything?"

"The ships each have this symbol printed on them." Zayne pulled up an image emblazoned into the ship's flank.

A seven-pointed star.

Sabrina gasped. "That's the AtomZero symbol."

"What's AtomZero?"

"AtomZero is a corporation hailing from dimension 4183. They were bent on taking over as many dimensions as possible and turning the entire multiverse into a sort of communist/environmentalist complex. Luckily, the SOS team leader at that time - Honourri Eviel - and her team unearthed their true intent. They wanted a dictatorship of the strongest species existing in the multiverse, with a slavery complex of the weaker creatures. We shut them down in 1982 and got rid of dimensional crisis.

"But no matter how hard SOS has tried, together with DSA - Dimensional Security Agency - and the PEC, the Peace and Equality Corporation, there've always been a pocket of survivors laying low. Tracking devices become obsolete over dimensional or time-wise travel, and the millions upon thousands upon billions of existing dimensions serve as their own hiding place.

"The main species on dimension 4183 possess one of the greatest potentially threatening powers in the multiverse: The power to control almost anything using atomic signals. Each atom has a complex of electrons, and by sending shockwaves through each electron, they can control anything made up of atoms, and that's most things. So in short, they've been the ones causing mysterious deaths.

"All the previous deaths - Benkei, Nile, Demorae, Yu, Maya, Griffin, Natasha, and Masamune - have occured under undoubtedly supernatural circumstances."

"But that doesn't explain the sudden appearance of Slugbunnies", Tai insisted, jabbing at the screen where the ghastly creature still bumbled around.

"I think it does.

"You see, I've got the sonic transmitters hooked up above ground, and this is what I'm picking up." Zayne showed them a real-time image taken with what was basically ultrasound technology. "This carrier flew in an hour ago, carrying this."

Zooming in, you could make out the vague shape of a hanging net, much like the ones used to transport polar bears between ground for repopulation reasons in Alaska. "2 minutes later, this is what I got." The net was caught in the photo bursting open, with many humanoid creatures silhouetted in ultrasonic.

"This is the same image taken with a regular imaging camera." The photograph showed hundreds of Slugbunnies falling out of nowhere.

"In conclusion: AtomZero is the one who brought the Slugbunnies here. They're using them to get rid of the pesky few who got to safety before the global disasters could hit."

"They're the cleanup crew", gasped Sabrina.

"I still don't see what this has to do with Kyouya."

"We're getting to that part. You know I possess telepathic abilities, right?

"When two telepathic bodies communicate, the thoughts flow through the air like packet data or a cell phone signal, from mind to mind. You have to be careful, though; some telepaths are able to pick up on air-transmitted data. That's why touch-transmitted is more secure because it's practically impossible to track.

"AtomZero has a telepath on board with them, communicating with others of their kind around the globe. That's how I can tell that there's exactly 6 airships floating above Kansas City right now, and 8 above New Delhi. I'm picking up on the transmitted signals from the telepaths in that location because they're going full-fire directly above us.

"There's another on, though. A telepath at the centre of it all. Someone's sitting high up above the earth itself, closer to the sun I think. He's telling them what to do. And that's where Kyouya comes in.

"Do you remember the day that I put a brain scanner behind your ear? Your mind is attuned to a certain kind of signal, like a radio frequency. Everyone's mind is. That's why sometimes you say things at the same time as somebody else does, or know what they're going to say before they say it, because your mind is picking up on their frequency - kind of like a radio.

"This mystery telepath is communicating from nearly the sun. His thoughts have to come at a frequency nigh impossibly high. Your mind appears to be the only one on earth picking it up."

Kyouya sat stunned at this rush of information from the boy genius. By now Luis, Mal, and Tsubasa were gathered around, contemplating this theory quietly.

Sabrina broke the silence, picking up Riley from the floor. "Do we have any cat food stocked up?"


	21. Risks

Whew. I mean, like, wow. I can't believe I just wrote all that scientific blab. Sorry. Madoka and I would get along just fine together, wouldn't we.

Well that last chapter is dedicated to the real Zayne, who is a genius, one of the best friends EVER, who doesn't really have a Y in his name, and who loves airplanes. Hi there, Zayne. I don't know how you put up with me.

AND moving along, hope I don't bore you with my science stuff. (I read waaaay too much sci-fi...)

And for a pic of Tsubasa's guitar:

ww w. lunaguitars acousticproduct / ame100 . php

* * *

Kyouya watched Sabrina move out of the lab with Riley, wondering if it was really a good idea to let her take his cat, and followed quietly to ensure the safety of what was possibly the last domesticated cat left on earth.

He sat quietly at a small table in a corner of the kitchen, inspecting his fingernails casually while observing Sabrina and Riley out of the corner of his eye. Sabrina was instructing Cythia to dig around in the cellar for cat food. The cellar consisted of a 6-sided concrete-walled room, lined with shelves around the perimeter and stacked in library-precision rows from floor to ceiling, containing everything from canned peaches to smoked salmon. Sabrina chose the smoked salmon for lack of anything else remotely resembling cat food.

Kyouya watched her to make sure she didn't poison it.

He shut his eyes finally and scrubbed his knuckles across his eyes, wishing for coffee. He wondered how much longer he'd be alive to enjoy it.

Kyouya looked up when he heard the thunk of porcelain against the wood table.

"Eat up, kitty boy. Otherwise you might become more useless than usual." Cythia wandered off to insult the rest of humanity.

Oh, no, Kyouya, don't take it personal, Kyouya thought. She just doesn't like you, is all.

He shouldn'tve been watching Sabrina for poison, but Cythia. He'd rather eat cat food. If Cythia was serving everybody breakfast, chances were she'd laced his with arsenic.

When Kyouya smelled coffee brewing in the little kitchen, he grabbed a cup and hurried back to the boys' bedroom with Riley in tow. He didn't want the little cat wiggling his way up to the surface in that particular way that cats always do.

Tsubasa's guitar lay across his cot, shining temptingly in the soft grey light from overhead. The soft rays of grey fell on the hand-crafted Luna model, an eagle spreading its wings over the inlay at the centre. He picked it up, crossing one leg beneath him on the flannel sheets, and settled it under his right arm.

Each strum of the strings produced a single clear note; Kyouya shut his eyes and let his fingers find the chords automatically. He leaned his head against the open window, though only cold earth rested beyond the glass, and let his mind wander towards peace for the first time in months; he'd not picked up his own guitar since Benkei had left, because it reminded him how Benkei used to sing so loud and off-tune at parties when he would play.

But now the music fuelled him and let him think, pushing forward through the thoughts he'd been dodging for so long. His mind opened and his breathing slowed, and his brain worked.

Where could Kakeru be? His little brother? Probably dead somewhere; with one downstroke of the C chord he was on to other thoughts.

Zhou Xing was stuck with them now. Lost without his team; even the strong Wang Hu Zhong could not defend against the horrors of Slugbunnies and the all-bowing force of the earthquakes. Kyouya let it go without a tear.

He didn't know how long he stayed there, lost in meditation. But the only thing that took him out of his trance was the loud voice over the intercom, calling out through all the rooms in the facility.

"Hey everybody, uh, this is Zayne...I'm interrupting you guys right now cuz Sabrina wants us all in room 12 stat. We've gotten communication from Jerry."

Zayne signed off, and Kyouya stood, laying the guitar back down on the bed. He didn't know who Jerry was. But he did know that any communication from the outside could mean something big.

He made his way to the upper level of the facility, able to feel the heat signature rising a little up here closer to the surface. Room 12 was lined with two small rows of upholstered chairs, with a large flat screen monitor on the far wall. Sabrina was fiddling with the control panel on the side; he took the seat next to Tsubasa in the back.

A picture blinked onto the screen. A boy with dark black hair and the beginnings of a moustache appeared on the left of the screen. This, Kyouya presumed, was Jerry.

The guy waved. "Team SOS, subdivision 101, do you read me?"

"Read ya loud and clear, Jerry", Sabrina answered.

"Excellent. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Jerry Hummer, leader of team SOS subdivision 107. I'm coming to you live from underground in Kansas City, and as far as I know, we're the only humans left on earth."

Kyouya shuddered.

"Jerry, you need to get active transport to facility 806 as soon as possible", Tai announced, referring to the facility they were currently in. "If we're gonna solve this problem, we're gonna need your help."

Jerry seemed surprised. "No way, sister. I'm getting off this rock." A shimmering wall of transparent holofeed appeared behind him.

"Hold on a second, Jerry!" Zayne leapt up in front of the screen. "How many days did you spend building that?"

"7. It's probably the fastest-built interdimensional travel system in history."

"How many days were spent on stabilization?"

"2."

"Jerry, don't go through there. You'll never make it. A portal with only 2 days' stability work by one person won't be able to handle your BMI and you'll never make it through." Zayne smacked the screen with the palm of his hand.

"Relax. I've got to take this chance."

"You're leaving NOW?"

"Afraid so. Can't afford to be stuck here with these things reproducing at lightning speed...they'll find us all eventually. Plus, I'm getting signals that they're sending in depth moles in 3 days."

"NO way."

"Yes. So wish me luck, seeya on the flipside, all that." Jerry turned. Sabrina screamed at them to cover their eyes.

When Kyouya opened his eyes again, the screen was blank. Sabrina was white as paper.

"Jerry's gone", she said softly. "He didn't make it through. The portal closed halfway through and he got cut clean in half."

Kyouya shook his head sadly. Now they were truly alone.


	22. Master Plan

OH NOES! WE ARE ALONES! WHAT WE GONNA DO!

Jerry's dead, and Griff and Natasha. Cythia could KILL US ALL...

Maybe Zayne can find a way to get us off this dying world? Hmm? I don't know. We'll see.

* * *

18 people left in the world altogether. The only 18 people of Planet Earth sat now in a small room in an underground bunker around 3 tables; many of them had their hands clasped before them, heads bowed in defeat and respect for the dead, lost in thought.

Zayne stood finally, his face grim. "I need to go send a spider cam up to the surface. If Jerry was right, and they're sending in depth moles, we're in trouble."

He left the room.

"What on earth are depth moles?" Kyouya heard Tsubasa whisper softly.

"Depth moles are creatures about the size of your hand. They can burrow down to the centre of most planets", Tai answered. "They look like regular moles but have way more firepower and better depth and vision perception. Many planets have trained them to hold cameras or respond to directional signals, in order to spy and infiltrate. Some can even steal small objects like keys and glass bottles. If they manage to build a tunnel complex to the top of the facility, it'll become fragile enough for the slugbunnies to get through, and then they'll rip the roof off this place like the top of a sardine can."

She sat down quietly. The room was silent for a moment, contemplating this horrendous image.

Zayne returned, looking exhausted. They all probably were. It was hard to sleep with the chill of lifeless earth pressing in from all sides like a coffin.

"I think we should all get some rest", Sabrina said, standing wearily. "Some of us may be supernatural, but we all need sleep, and we evidently haven't gotten enough. Besides. I get the feeling we have a lot of work to do."

So saying, she exited the room. Everybody slowly followed suit.

Kyouya collapsed on one of the cots as Luis flipped off the light, Riley meowing pitifully at the door and begging to go out and explore the strange new world. "Make that cat shut up", muttered Ryuga.

Riley eventually settled down at the foot of Luis's bed, sending waves of betrayal towards Kyouya. He was too tired to care, and was asleep moments later.

* * *

The next morning, Kyouya wasn't sure what woke him - was it first the rumbling in his stomach or the frantic voices above him?

"Don't know why - "

"He could never survive out there."

"...has to be crazy."

"Somebody go up there and find him!"

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. "What are you guys talking about?"

"Read this. It was on Ryo's bed this morning." Zayne shoved a note into his hands.

"Gone to find Hyouma, back in a jiff...WHAT!? WHY WOULD HE GO OUT THERE."

"He won't have made it past the front gate."

The door slammed open and Sabrina stood in the doorway. "Do we have a problem, people? Because I have a problem. WE'RE TRYING TO SLEEP."

"Ryo's headed for the hills. Somehow he thinks Hyouma survived."

"What?" Sabrina was fully awake now. "How did that happen!? Okay, which of you in here gave him the key code to the elevator?"

"He must've snuck into the lab last night and got it off the corkboard."

"But you keep the lab locked."

"Well, I was so tired it must've slipped my mind", sighed Zayne. "Give me the key to the surveillance room, he could still be up there. We might have a chance yet."

Kyouya laid a hand on Ryo's cot. It was warm still; he may have left only a half hour ago. He raced after Zayne into the lab, where he stuck a key into the modem at the TV wall and it turned on.

An image showed on the centre screen immediately. One of the slugbunnies was chewing greedily on a maroon suit jacket.

A very familiar maroon suit jacket.

A movement in the bushes caught the eyes of the small group of people. A tuft of rust-coloured hair peeked out from behind a leaf.

"He's still up there!" gasped Gingka. "We have to go get him, he could be hurt."

"Calm down. Mallory, I want you to go up there and project a field around him. I'll transport him back."

"There's no time for that!" Gingka grabbed a post-it note off one of the corkboards hanging on the bookshelves.

"No, Gingka, WAIT!"

Gingka was gone. Down the hall and to the left lay a lift. Zayne raced after him, but the lift had already taken off.

The red-haired boy genius shut his eyes and lifted his hands. The group around him could hear the lift screeching to a halt inside the tunnel. But a moment later, Zayne gasped and staggered back. The lift shot up to the surface, and Zayne pressed his hands to his head and moaned.

"He used his pegasus to propel the lift. That's too much unexpected mechanical force. I couldn't stop it."

Cythia screamed from the lab around the corner. As the rest of the gang reached the door, the monitors powered off. A lone tear rolled down Cythia's cheek.

"Nothing we can do now", she murmured quietly.

"We lost another two? In one day?" Sabrina shook her head. Then she turned to the rest of the group.

"I want you to listen to me. We need all your hands and help. We can't afford to have you running off like they did. From now on, we will take NO RISKS. Be careful. And by all means, if Kyouya says you better do something, YOU BETTER DO IT. He knows what he's talking about."

Cythia groaned.

"ANYWAY. Zayne, do you have a plan to get us off this forsaken planet or what?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. Everyone follow me to room 12, please."

The 16 remaining people in the world trooped obediently after Zayne to the flat-screened folding-chaired room above their heads. Zayne stood before them as they sat, the TV screen black and blank behind him.

"I have some news for you. You're not going to like it. But the only way to save our skins now is to go the same way Jerry did."

"WHAT!?"

"That's what I thought. Listen, we can't save this forsaken planet. DO you know why slugbunnies are called slugbunnies? Because they have lethal sluggers on the ends of their tongues and they reproduce faster than rabbits. That's pretty fast. They're already outnumbering us 1000 to one, or more. They'll outnumber us at least 5000 to one tomorrow.

"We're going to another dimension."

Mal raised a hand.

"Yes, Mal."

"What I'm worried about is lack of identification. If we transport to a world like this one, where passport are required to go to a different country...due to the difference in planet rotation, we could end up in Australia with no passports. I mean, I for one do not have an inter-country passport."

"Neither do I", muttered Zayne, "But we'll have to take that one risk if we want to stay alive. Any other comments?"

"Travelling between dimensions without a permit is generally illegal", Luis stated.

"Right, but getting a permit could take months. I doubt we have even one. We can deal with the legal formalities when we're sure we won't get eaten."

"What if we end up somewhere where we can't understand the language?"

"We'll hire a translator. We have plenty of cash. Anything else? No? Okay. Let's get to work."

The group huddled around the backmost table in the lab as Zayne pored over coordinates and maps. "There are 12 dimensions we could end up in: 548, 654, and 745 to the north. 868, 867, and 869 to the east. 864, 865, and 866 to the west. And 985, 1024, and 1123 to the south.

"Luckily we shouldn't end up in a dimension full of slugbunnies or anything; each of these is protected by the Unity. Most are not open to the idea of dimensional travel, and neither was this one; most of them have the same country names as our earth, though there are different cities, because closely clustered dimensions tend to influence the others around them.

"This is caused by the stars, which each act as a portal to a different dimension - did you ever notice how many there are in our universe? Surely they serve a wonderful purpose. Black holes are caused by dimensional pollution - generally stars that were used so much as a gateway between that they opened up. That's where a lot of the inexplicable oddities come from that make the Paranormal News. Objects, traditions, and even thoughts make their way into the outer reaches of the universe, going into those stars that are closest to the earth, such as the sun, and causing the trends to take hold of those dimensions closest to them."

The group around the table nodded.

"I need you to follow my instructions as well as possible if we're going to get out of here, OK? With 16 people, we might be able to get this portal stable enough to handle all our matter in 1 week. Force fields, levitation, and earthbending can bide us a little time over the depth moles." Zayne looked around at Cythia and Mal.

"Are we OK to get underway today after breakfast, Sabrina?...Okay. Everyone get something to eat and meet back here ASAP. We don't have any more time to waste."


	23. Equation plus means equals escape

By the time Kyouya had downed a quick breakfast - avoiding Cythia, no doubt - and was making his way to the lab, Zayne was already there, eating off a plate while he typed something into a computer.

"Whatcha doin'?"

"I'm trying to get a signal out to the other SOS leaders. We're only subdivision 12, you know. These messages are red-coded and require response within 2 hours or less; if they don't signal back, we know they're dead. Nobody disregards a red-code unless they are dead.

"I already know Caius from subdivision 87 is gone, because he always answers within a half-hour, and Jerry's gone too. They were two of our best leaders."

The sinking pit of loneliness in Kyouya's stomach intensified.

By now, Cythia and Luis were gathered around behind Zayne's laptop. Zayne sent off the signal to the remaining locations and turned to the wall of monitor behind him; rising up out of the swivelling chair, he squinted at the centre one, and clacked his tongue in frustration.

"I'm losing the camera feed on this one..." grabbing an orange cable that went through a hole in the drywall, he tugged on it. It came out all the way, not plugged in to anything, and offering no resistance. Zayne shook his head.

"We can't get started if we don't have a camera feed." He stuck the cable back through the hole in the wall. "Kyouya, go around the corner. There's a door that leads to the cable room in the back. Grab the orange cable from the other side of the wall, there's a socket in the far wall that says MIDDLE CAMERA in bold-face. Plug it in there. Luis, if you could go find Sabrina, please. I expect she'll want to coax Mal out the closet soon enough."

Kyouya traversed around the corner and came to the first door; upon opening it, he found that it contained a great many duvets slung over hangers. A coat closet. The wrong one.

The next one was stacked up with laundry detergent and shampoo; he thought that perhaps they ought to label all these closets.

Finally, he came to the last door. Considering that all the others held raw fish, empty buckets, and oddly shaped bits of plywood, he suspected this might finally be the one.

Sure enough, he opened it to find a mess of cables and tangled wires underfoot. Approaching the far wall, he could hear Zayne's voice echoing through the thin plaster.

"...no. Don't worry about the tablecloth for now, Mal. It won't need to come with us...HIKARU! If you would PLEASE PUT THAT DOWN..." He found the orange cable, illuminated around the edges of the hole by the light coming from the lab. Kyouya grabbed the cable and tugged it along behind him.

"OOF! KYOUYA!" He could hear Madoka calling through the wall. "I WAS STANDING ON THAT!"

"Well I can't see you."

"Hmph..." Everyone seemed in a bad mood. He expected Madoka was trying to hide grief for Gingka and his father.

Kyouya, preoccupied with trying to pull the cable out from under Cythia's feet (she'd taken a hint from Madoka and was trying to annoy him), wasn't trying to feel where he was going in the dark, and his foot caught in a mess of wire.

He could hear his ankle popping as it twisted, and he fell down, letting go of the orange cable. He pulled the wires off his foot, his shoe coming off with them, and hissed in pain.

"Are you okay back there, Kyouya? I could hear something crashing," called Zhou Xing.

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Is there a light switch back here or something!?"

"It's on the wall by the door."

"Thank you." Kyouya stumbled up and turned on the light. He could see the orange cable mocking him on the ground.

He grabbed it and plugged it into the socket, turned off the light to the sounds of Zayne calling out in triumph as the camera feed went back on, and made his way slowly and painfully along the wall back to the lab.

Cythia looked up when he entered.

"Why are you walking so funny? Snake bite you, or something?"

"No. YOU made me twist my ankle when you stood on top of that cord."

Cythia looked repentant. "Lemme see."

"Get your hands off me. You'll probably smack me or something!"

"Ease up, Kyouya. Cythia's our medic", Tai called from the back of the room.

"Makes sense that YOU would be the medic. Of all people."

"Like it or not, I am." Cythia pressed on his ankle.

"HEY! OW!"

"All you did was twist it. Drama queen."

"We need to get to work instead of arguing", Sabrina informed them. Cythia hopped up and Kyouya followed; everybody gathered around Zayne.

"Okay. Great. Luis, take these boxes. Everyone follow me." Zayne marched out of the room and down the hall; a procession of survivors and floating cardboard boxes followed him erratically.

The boxes shifted into an orderly row along the bottom of the wall in the empty room; the room was dimly lit and contained only one large wooden table in the centre.

Zayne lifted a map from one of the boxes and spread it out on a corner of the table.

"Everyone gather round. I have a lot to explain to you all.

"First things first. We're not travelling INTO another dimension so much as we are travelling THROUGH it." Zayne took a sheet of paper and a pen.

"Look at this; this piece of paper is two-dimensional; in other words, it exists in two dimensions and therefore is measurable by them. Width and length.

"This pen is 3-dimensional, existing in 3 dimensions, in other words measurable by those dimensions as I said before. It can part this sheet of paper." The paper and pen floated in the air, and Zayne manoeuvred the pen to poke a hole in the paper.

"We, being measurable by width, height, and depth, nevertheless can see the paper, though it is only measurable by two dimensions. Why? Because we exist in a higher dimension than it does. Just like seeing a town from the top of a mountain.

"In the same sense, we can SEE many dimensions, being higher than they are, in a way. Small insects live in a different dimension time-wise because their hearts are beating faster and they are perceiving things in a faster motion than we are; we seem to be moving in slow-motion to them. But we can still see them because they exist in a dimension below ours.

"If this is possible, higher dimensions are able to perceive us. Think of dimensions as dots on paper: One in the centre, 3 to the top in a line vertically, 3 to each side horizontally, and 3 below. They extend much further, but 3 is a complex enough number. You can draw many different such complexes and layer the papers over one another, thus creating a dimensional complex of width, height, and depth. This is how we are arranged.

"Dimensions with lower numbers are not necessarily perceptible; anything outside the range of .5 lower is generally not visible." Here Zayne paused for a second and took a few deep breaths.

"Likewise most dimensions higher can not see us. Yet they overlap with ours. Basically we are creating a gateway to higher up, like a staircase, but it exists in a dimension-wise spaceframe; how do you bring a 2-dimensional object to the 3rd dimension?" He tore the paper in half, ripping a list down the centre of each one and then sliding the slits into each other. "We build it up.

"Then we must climb this metaphorical staircase, bringing our being, consciousness, and matter into a higher dimensional space. Once this is achieved, we will be able to perceive the higher-up dimension rather than this one, and what happens here will not affect us any longer. In essence, we will have transported fully to another location."

Zayne grabbed two bricks and weighed down the sides of the map. Everyone gathered around him.

"The actions that this portal will have to execute follow a simple equation: Remove time from the equation. To conjugate optics, reduce mass to energy, trans mutate, re-add time, and we will have stepped up on a higher level. In reality our mass will be converted to pure energy, and shot across the space-time continuum to aforementioned higher level. There time will begin to apply to us again, our matter will be reassembled, and poof. There we are."

"Wow", breathed Tsubasa. "It makes sense to me."

"Okay. Let's get started. We're going to be using this element: Alarium." Zayne cupped in his palm several red crystals. "It's found in this crystal from my home dimension. In reaction with 2 parts quantum and heat to 1.5 times its melting point, it opens a small portal which will translate our matter to energy, remove time from the equation, and transport us a questionable distance at about a dimension per hour. We need to spend quite a bit of time getting the equation stabilized and fully formulated, else we all end up like Jerry."

Kyouya shivered.

"So. Ready to get to work?"


End file.
